THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


Ex  Libris 
C.  K.  OGDEN 


iu.. 


i.\ 


*7'-.^'»J* 


'.'^v^yf'uA-? 


A  HISTORY 


OF 


AUSTRO-HUNGAR\ 

FROM   THE   EARLIEST   TIME    TO    THE 
YEAR    1889 

BV.  ,./   ^' 

LOUIS    LEGER 

/    '/  . 

HONORARY   PROFESSOR    IN   THE   SCHOOL   OF  ORIENTAL    LANGUAGES 

PROFESSOR   IN    THE  COLLEGE   OF-  FRANCE,    IN    THE   SUPERIOR    MILITARY    SCHOOL 

AND    IN    THE   SCHOOL   OF    POLITICAL   SCIENCES 

TRANSLATED  FROM   THE   FRENCH  BY 
MRS.    BIRKBECK   HILL 

WITH   A   PREFACE    BY 

EDWARD   A.  FREEMAN,  D.C.L. 

KEGIUS    PROFESSOR    OF    MODERN    HISTORY    IN   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF    OXFORD 


/ 


RIVINGTONS 
WATERLOO    PLACE,   LQNDON 

MDCCCLXXXIX 


PRE  FACE. 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  write  something  to  introduce  an 
English  translation  of  M.  Louis  Leger's  "  Histoire  de 
I'Autriche-Hongrie,"  a  number  of  the  series  headed 
"  Histoire  Universelle,"  and  published  under  the  direc- 
tion of  M.  Daray.  The  subject  is  one  on  which  English 
readers  certainly  need  more  light  than  they  commonly 
have,  and  M.  Leger's  book,  which  I  have  read  in  the 
original,  seems  by  no  means  ill  suited  to  supply  them 
with  it.  It  has  many  merits,  and  it  is  remarkably  free 
from  the  usual  faults  of  French  writings.  Though  M. 
Leger  has  to  deal  with  the  most  exciting  times  of  modern 
French  history,  there  is  not  in  his  book  the  slightest 
sign  of  conventional  French  swagger.  His  story  is 
perhaps  as  clear  as  the  story  can  be  made.  For  it  is  by 
no  means  an  easy  task  to  tell  the  story  of  the  various 
lands  which  have  at  different  times  come  under  the 
dominion  of  Austrian  princes,  the  story  of  each  land  by 
itself,  and  the  story  of  them  all  in  relation  to  the  com- 
mon power.  A  continuous  narrative  is  impossible.  In 
grouping  together  so  many  different  elements,  no  two 
writers  would  be  likely  to  hit  on  exactly  the  same 
arrangement,  and  none  could  altogether  avoid  some 
measure  of  going  backwards  and  forwards.  There 
would  have  been  more  clearness  and  unity  of  design  in 
a  simple  history  of  the  growth  of  the  Austrian  power 
which  should  take  for  granted  the  history  of  each  land 
up  to  the  time  when  its  connexion  with  the  Austrian 
power  began.     But  this  would  imply  the  separate  stud\- 

b  2 


vi  PREFACE. 

of  separate  histories  of  Hungary,  Bohemia,  and  some 
smaller  lands.  And  from  this  some  readers  might  have 
shrunk.  And  even  after  the  various  lands  had  been 
brought  under  the  rule  of  a  common  sovereign,  it  would 
still  have  been  hard  to  tell  the  story  of  all  in  a  single 
continuous  narrative.  M.  Leger  has  not  attempted  to 
do  so.  It  is  perhaps  a  gain  that  his  subject  and  his 
book  involve  a  certain  amount  of  thinking  and  a  certain 
amount  of  looking  backwards  and  around. 

M.  Leger's  way  of  speaking  is  on  the  whole  accurate  ; 
he  does  not,  after  the  modern  fashion,  use  words  at 
random.  He  has  most  likely  grasped  the  hard  truth 
that  names  are  facts.  But  one  strange  inaccuracy  runs 
through  the  book,  which  cannot  be  the  result  of  ignor- 
ance, and  which  must  therefore  be  done  on  some 
principle,  though  it  is  not  easy  to  see  what  the  principle 
is.  M.  Leger  constantly  speaks  of  an  "  Empereur  d'Alle- 
magne."  I  know  not  whether  there  are  still  any  who 
need  to  be  told  that  no  such  title  ever  existed  or  could 
exist.  That  it  was  formally  used  once,  and  I  believe 
once  only,  by  the  Emperor  Francis  the  Second  in  the 
treaty  of  Pressburg,  proves  only  that  that  prince  had 
either  forgotten  who  he  was  or  else  was  forced  to  describe 
himself  in  any  way  that  his  French  conqueror  bade  him. 
By  that  time  the  King  of  Germany  and  Emperor-elect 
of  the  Romans  had  certainly  very  little  Roman  character 
left  about  him.  Still  the  use  of  the  inaccurate  phrase  is 
quite  needless  ;  the  usual  language  of  the  time,  "  the 
Emperor,"  without  further  description,  is  quite  enough, 
and  can  lead  to  no  confusion.  But  in  earlier  times  to 
talk  of  an  "  Ernperor  of  Germany  "  is  not  only  inaccurate, 
but  misleading.  Down  at  least  to  Charles  the  Fifth,  the 
Roman  character  of  the  Empire  had  not  wholly  passed 
away,  and  to  speak  of  a  Frankish  or  Swabian  Emperor 
as  "  Emperor  of  Germany"  gives  a, wholly  false  impres- 
sion. Those  who  read  M.  Leger  will  do  well  to  read 
Mr.  Bryce's  "  Holy  Roman  Empire"  as  well.  Otherwise 
M.  Leger  is  careful  in  these  matters.     He  docs  not,  for 


PREFACE.  \\\ 

instance,  create  an  "  Austrian  empire"  before  the  time  ; 
his  usual  phrase  for  the  various  lands  which  obeyed  a 
common  Austrian  sovereign  is  "etat  Autrichien."  It 
must  be  a  misprint  or  a  strange  slip  which  has  once 
quartered  a  "  grand-duke "  in  Austria.  It  is  perhaps 
to  make  things  square  that,  under  the  guidance  of  a 
later  English  writer,  "archdukes"  have  made  their 
way  into  Russia. 

There  is  no  subject  on  which  ordinary  readers  stand 
in  more  need  of  a  clear  setting  forth  of  facts  than  on 
that  which  M.  Leger  has  taken  in  hand.  The  facts  in 
themselves  need  some  thought,  and  some  clearness  of 
thought,  to  grasp  them,  and  the  difficulty  is  heightened 
by  popular  confusions  both  of  thought  and  of  language. 
Much  mischief  has  been  done  by  one  small  fashion  of 
modern  speech.  It  has  within  my  memory  become 
usual  to  personify  nations  and  powers  on  the  smallest 
occasions  in  a  way  which  was  formerly  done  only  in 
language  more  or  less  solemn,  rhetorical,  or  poetical. 
We  now  talk  every  moment  of  England,  France. 
Germany,  Russia,  Italy,  as  if  they  were  persons.  And 
as  long  as  it  is  only  England,  France,  Germany,  Russia, 
or  Italy  of  which  we  talk  in  this  way,  no  practical  harm 
is  done ;  the  thing  is  a  mere  question  of  style.  F"or 
those  are  all  national  powers.  If  each  of  these  powers 
is  not  strictly  coextensive  with  a  nation,  yet  in  each 
there  is  a  nation  and  a  national  feeling  which  directs 
the  action  of  the  power.  This  is  true  even  of  despotic 
powers.  The  Tzar  himself  cannot  act  in  direct  opposi- 
tion to  the  known  will  of  the  Russian  people.  To  talk 
of  "  Russia's  interests,"  "  Russia's  policy  "  and  the  like  in 
everyday  prose  sounds  odd  ;  but  it  simply  sounds  odd  ; 
no  further  harm  is  done.  But  when  we  go  on  to  talk  in 
this  way  of  "  Austria  "  or  "  Turkey,"  direct  harm  is  done  ; 
thought  is  confused,  and  facts  are  misrepresented.  The 
"  interests  "  of  England  or  France  mean  the  interests  of 
the  English  or  French  people.  A  "  friend  "  of  England 
or  France  would  mean  a  friend  of  the  English  or  French 


viii  PREFACE. 

people.  But  when  we  hear,  as  we  have  heard,  of  a 
"  friend  of  Turkey,"  does  that  mean  a  friend  of  the 
people  of  the  land  marked  "  Turkey  "  on  the  map,  or  a 
friend  of  their  foreign  oppressor  the  Turk  ?  Do  the 
"  interests  of  Turkey  "  mean  the  interests  of  the  Turk, 
or  the  exactly  opposite  interests  of  the  nations  which  the 
Turk  holds  in  bondage?  So  with  "Austria."  One  has 
heard  of  the  "  interests  of  Austria,"  the  "  policy  of 
Austria  ; "  I  have  seen  the  words,  "  Austrian  national 
honour  ; "  I  have  come  across  people  who  believed  that 
"  Austria  "  was  one  land  inhabited  by  "  Austrians,"  and 
that  "Austrians  "  spoke  the  "Austrian"  language.  All 
such  phrases  are  misapplied.  It  is  to  be  presumed  that 
in  all  of  them  "Austria"  means  something  more  than 
the  true  Austria,  the  archduchy  ;  what  is  commonly 
meant  by  them  is  the  whole  dominions  of  the  sovereign 
of  Austria.  People  fancy  that  the  inhabitants  of  those 
dominions  have  a  common  being,  a  common  interest,  like 
that  of  the  people  of  England,  France,  or  Italy.  Now 
it  is  hardly  needful  to  stop  to  prove  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  an  Austrian  language,  that  a  whole  crowd 
of  languages  are  spoken  within  the  dominions  of  the 
sovereign  of  Austria,  German,  Magyar,  Italian,  Rouman, 
and  the  various  dialects  of  the  great  Slavonic  majority. 
Each  of  these  is  the  language  of  a  nation,  the  whole  or 
part  of  which  is  under  the  rule  of  an  Austrian  prince  ; 
but  there  is  no  Austrian  language,  no  Austrian  nation  ; 
therefore  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  "  Austrian 
national  honour."  Nor  can  there  be  an  "  Austrian 
policy  "  in  the  same  sense  in  which  there  is  an  English 
or  a  French  policy,  that  is,  a  policy  in  which  the  Eng- 
lish or  French  governm.ent  carries  out  the  will  of  the 
English  or  French  nation.  Nor  can  there  be  a  common 
"  Austrian  interest "  for  all  the  dominions  of  the 
sovereign  of  Austria  ;  for  the  interests  of  the  German 
and  the  Magyar  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  Slave  and  the 
Rouman  on  the  other,  are  always  different,  and  often 
opposed.    In  truth,  such  phrases  as  "Austrian  interests," 


PREFACE.  ix 

"  Austrian  policy,"  and  the  like,  do  not  mean  the 
interests  or  policy  of  any  land  or  nation  at  all.  They 
simply  mean  the  interests  and  policy  of  a  particular 
ruling  family,  which  may  often  be  the  same  as  the 
interests  and  wishes  of  particular  parts  of  their  dominions, 
but  which  can  never  represent  any  common  interest  or 
common  wish  on  the  part  of  the  whole. 

It  leads  to  confusion  thus  to  personify  "Austria"  in 
the  way  now  so  common,  just  as  it  leads  to  yet  worse 
confusion  so  to  personify  "  Turkey."  Our  fathers 
avoided  such  confusions.  They  spoke  of  "  the  Turk," 
"  the  Grand  Turk,"  "  the  Grand  Seignior,"  names  which 
accurately  distinguished  the  foreign  oppressor  from 
the  lands  and  nations  which  he  holds  in  bondage.  So 
they  spoke  of  "the  House  of  Austria,"  a  form  which 
accurately  distinguished  the  ruling  family  from  the 
various  kingdoms,  duchies,  counties,  etc.,  over  which  the 
head  of  that  house  bears  rule.  We  must  ever  remember 
that  the  dominions  of  the  House  of  Austria  are  simply 
a  collection  of  kingdoms,  duchies,  etc.,  brought  together  by 
various  accidental  causes,  but  which  have  nothing  really 
in  common,  no  common  speech,  no  common  feeling,  no 
common  interest.  In  one  case  only,  that  of  the  Magyars 
in  Hungary,  does  the  House  of  Austria  rule  over  a 
whole  nation  ;  the  other  kingdoms,  duchies,  etc.,  are 
only  parts  of  nations,  having  no  tie  to  one  another,  but 
having  the  closest  ties  to  other  parts  of  their  several 
nations  which  lie  close  to  them,  but  which  are  under 
other  governments.  The  only  bond  among  them  all  is 
that  a  series  of  marriages,  wars,  treaties,  and  so  forth, 
have  given  them  a  common  sovereign.  The  same  person 
is  King  of  Hungary,  Archduke  of  Austria,  Count  of 
Tyrol,  Lord  of  Trieste,  and  a  hundred  other  things. 
That  is  all.  Other  powers,  most  powers,  have  also  been 
enlarged  by  conquests  and  annexations  of  various  kinds ; 
but  these  conquests  and  annexations  have  commonly 
been,  sooner  or  later,  fused  into  one  general  mass. 
Thus  modern  France  has  been  formed  by  the  annexation 


X'  PREFACE. 

to  the  elder  France  of  a  great  number  of  lands,  some  of 
which  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  France,  while 
others  simply  owed  the  crown  of  France  an  external 
homage.  But  all  the  lands  annexed  to  France  have 
sooner  or  later,  many  of  them  wonderfully  soon,  become 
French,  both  formally  and  practically.  It  is  therefore 
right  to  speak  of  any  one  of  them  as  French  from  the 
time  of  its  annexation  to  France,  just  as  it  is  wrong 
to  speak  of  it  as  French  before  its  annexation.  But 
the  lands  which  have  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers 
manners  been  brought  under  the  power  of  the  House  of 
Austria  have  not  in  this  way  become,  cither  formally 
or  practically,  Austrian.  The  kingdom  of  Bohemia, 
the  kingdom  of  Dalmatia,  the  duchy  of  Ragusa,  the 
lordship  of  Cattaro,  are  indeed  under  the  dominion 
of  the  head  of  the  House  of  Austria  ;  but  they  are  not 
parts  of  Austria,  their  people  are  not  Austrians.  They 
are  not  Austria  and  Austrian  in  the  same  way  in  which 
Normandy,  Provence,  Aquitaine,  Lyons,  Franche  Comte, 
a  crowd  of  duchies,  counties,  and  cities,  have  both 
formally  and  practically  become  parts  of  France,  and 
their  people  French. 

The  growth  and  the  abiding  dominion  of  the  House 
of  Austria  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  phaenomena  in 
European  history.  Powers  of  the  same  kind  have  arisen 
twice  before  ;  but  in  both  cases  they  were  very  short- 
lived, while  the  power  of  the  House  of  Austria  has 
lasted  for  several  centuries.  The  power  of  the  House  of 
Anjou  in  the  twelfth  century,  the  power  of  the  House 
of  Burgundy  in  the  fifteenth  century,  were  powers  of 
exactly  the  same  kind.  They  too  were  collections 
of  scraps,  with  no  natural  connexion,  brought  together 
by  the  accidents  of  warfare,  marriage,  or  diplomacy. 
Now  why  is  it  that  both  those  powers  broke  in  pieces 
almost  at  once,  after  the  reigns  of  two  princes  in  each 
case,  while  the  power  of  the  House  of  Austria  has  lasted 
so  long  .?  Two  causes  suggest  themselves.  One  is  the 
long  connexion  between  the  House  of  Austria  and  the 


FREFACE.  XI 

Roman  Empire  and  kingdom  of  Germany.  So  many 
Austrian  princes  were  elected  Emperors  as  to  make  the 
Austrian  House  seem  something  great  and  imperial  in 
itself.  I  believe  that  this  cause  has  done  a  good  deal 
towards  the  result ;  but  I  believe  that  another  cause  has 
done  yet  more.  This  is  that,  though  the  Austrian 
power  is  not  a  national  power,  there  is,  as  has  been 
already  noticed,  a  nation  within  it.  While  it  contains 
only. scraps  of  other  nations,  it  contains  the  whole  of  the 
Magyar  nation.  It  thus  gets  something  of  the  strength 
of  a  national  power.  The  possession  of  Hungary  has 
more  than  once  saved  the  Austrian  power  from  altogether 
breaking  in  pieces.  And  it  is  certain  that,  at  this  moment, 
the  policy  of  the  House  of  Austria,  so  far  as  it  is  anything 
more  than  the  mere  policy  of  a  family,  is  the  policy  of 
the  kingdom  of  Hungary. 

One  very  common  delusion  is  to  look  on  the  power 
of  the  House  of  Austria,  and  even  on  the  so-called 
"  Austrian  empire,"  as  something  ancient,  venerable, 
and  conservative.  If  we  look  carefully  at  the  matter, 
we  shall  find  that  the  only  thing  about  it  which  deserves 
any  of  these  adjectives  is  the  kingdom  of  Hungary. 
The  kingdom  of  Hungary  is  an  ancient  kingdom,  with 
known  boundaries  which  have  changed  singularly  little 
for  several  centuries  ;  and  its  connexion  with  the  arch- 
duchy of  Austria  and  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia  is  now 
of  long  standing.  Anything  beyond  this  is  modern  and 
shifting.  The  so-called  "  empire  of  Austria  "  dates  onl}- 
from  the  year  1804.  This  is  one  of  the  simplest  matters 
in  the  world,  but  one  which  is  constantly  forgotten. 
I  have  often  seen  the  phrase  "  Emperor  of  Austria  " 
applied  to  princes  of  the  last  century,  sometimes  to 
much  earlier  princes,  even  to  Frederick  Barbarossa  him- 
self I  have  seen  an  English  translation  of  a  French 
book  of  the  last  century  which  described  the  visit  of  the 
Emperor  Joseph  the  Second  to  Paris,  He  was  naturally, 
according  to  the  custom  of  the  time,  spoken  of  simply 
as  "the  Emperor;"  the  English  translator  thought  it 


Xll  PREFACE. 

necessary  to  explain  that  Joseph  the  Second  was 
"  Emperor  of  Austria."  Most  people  seem  to  fancy- 
that  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  Charles  the  Sixth,  which 
settled  the  succession  to  the  hereditary  states  of  the 
House  of  Austria,  settled  the  succession  to  some 
"empire,"  perhaps  an  "empire  of  Austria."  The 
position  of  the  Empress-queen,  Maria  Theresa,  Queen 
of  Hungary  in  her  own  right,  Empress  as  wife  of  the 
elected  Emperor  Francis  the  First,  is  a  puzzle  to  many. 
To  many  it  seems  odd  that,  on  the  death  of  her  father, 
she  at  once  became  a  queen,  but  did  not  at  once  become 
an  empress.  Yet  surely  in  itself  the  state  of  the  case  is 
perfectly  easy  to  understand  ;  the  whole  difficulty  arises 
from  the  fact  that  for  eighty  years  past  the  phrases 
"emperor"  and  "empire  of  Austria"  have  been  in 
common  use,  and  that  people  are  therefore  tempted  to 
carry  them  back  into  times  when  they  had  never  been 
heard  of 

May  I  venture  on  a  very  simple  illustration  ?  Since 
1804,  and  more  conspicuously  since  1806,  the  Kings  of 
Hungary  and  Archdukes  of  Austria  have  called  them- 
selves "  Emperors  of  Austria  ; "  and  they  have  borne  as 
the  chief  part  of  their  arms  the  eagle  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire.  Their  reason  for  so  doing  is  obvious.  As 
simple  kings  and  archdukes,  with  the  lion  of  Austria 
for  their  bearing,  they  could  never  have  kept  the 
position  in  the  world  which  they  have  kept  as  self- 
styled  emperors.  Their  attempted  excuse  for  doing 
so  can  only  be  that  several  dukes  of  their  house  were 
Emperors  by  election.  Four  princes  of  the  House  of 
Lorraine,  besides  earlier  princes  of  the  true  House  of 
Habsburg,  were  chosen  Emperors  of  the  Romans  and 
Kings  of  Germany.  The  last  of  them  resigned  the 
elective  Empire,  but  went  on  calling  himself  "  Emperor 
of  Austria,"  and  bearing  the  imperial  eagle.  Now  for 
the  illustration.  The  late  Lord  Auckland,  an  hereditary 
baron,  was  also  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells  by  election, 
nomination,  or  whatever  we  call  the  complicated  process 


PREFACE.  xiii 

by  which  a  bishop  is  made.  Lord  Auckland  resigned 
his  bishopric.  If  he  had,  after  his  resignation,  called 
himself  Bishop  of  Auckland,  and  borne  the  arms  of  the 
see  of  Bath  and  Wells,  and  if  his  successor  in  the 
barony  had  gone  on  doing  the  same,  we  should  have  an 
exact  analogy  to  the  "  empire  of  Austria  "  and  its  eagle. 
Or,  as  there  was  nothing  in  this  case  to  create  a  tradition, 
let  us  take  another  illustration  where  the  family  tradi- 
tion comes  in.  Several  members  of  the  House  of  Beres- 
ford  have  been  Archbishops  of  Armagh,  just  as  several 
members  of  the  House  of  Lorraine  have  been  elective 
Roman  Emperors.  What  if  the  lay  representatives  of 
those  archbishops  should  call  themselves  Archbishops  of 
Beresford,  and  should  bear  the  arms  of  the  see  of  Armagh } 
These  illustrations  are  really  exact.  If  there  are  any 
minds  to  which  they  do  not  seem  so,  it  is  only  because 
the  word  "  bishop  "  still  keeps  a  definite  meaning,  while, 
since  the  year  1804,  the  word  "emperor"  has  lost  its 
meaning.  Any  ruler  that  chooses  now  calls  himself 
"emperor,"  simply  because  he  thinks  it  sounds  finer 
than  "  king."  But  this  is  the  result  of  the  events  of 
the  year  1804.  Down  to  that  year  the  title  of  Emperor 
was  applied  only  to  European  princes  who  were  supposed 
in  some  sort  to  continue  the  ancient  Roman  Empire, 
and,  by  a  kind  of  analogy,  to  barbarian  princes,  like  the 
Great  Mogul,  who  were  thought  to  hold  in  their  own 
part  of  the  world  a  position  answering  to  that  of  the 
Emperor  in  Europe.  Early  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  princes  of  Russia  began  to  call  themselves  emperors, 
as  they  had  always  been  Tzars  or  Ccesars  in  their  own 
tongue.  The  title  was  meant  to  imply  a  succession  of 
some  kind  or  other  from  the  Roman  Emperors  of  the 
East.  But  the  Russian  prince  was  emperor  only  with 
a  difference,  "Emperor  of  all  the  Russias."  The  Roman 
Emperor-elect  still  remained  "the  Emperor,"  without 
further  distinction.  In  1804  Napoleon  Buonaparte 
called  himself  "  Emperor  of  the  French,"  and  Francis 
of  Lorraine,  elective   Roman    Emperor,  called    himself 


xiv  PREFACE. 

"hereditary  Emperor  of  Austria,"  hereditary  emperor, 
that  is,  of  one  fief  of  his  elective  empire.  Both  had, 
from  their  own  points  of  view,  good  reasons  for  what 
they  did  ;  but  from  that  time  the  word  "emperor"  has 
lost  the  definite  meaning  which  it  held  down  to  that 
time. 

A  smaller  point  on  which  confusion  also  prevails  is 
this.  All  the  members  of  the  House  of  Austria  are 
commonly  spoken  of  as  archdukes  and  archduchesses. 
I  feel  sure  that  many  people,  if  asked  the  meaning  of 
the  word  ajxhdnke,  would  say  that  it  was  the  title  of  the 
children  of  the  "  Emperor  of  Austria,"  as  grand-duke  is 
used  in  Russia,  and  prince  in  most  countries.  In  truth, 
archduke  is  the  title  of  the  sovereign  of  Austria.  He 
has  not  given  it  up ;  for  he  calls  himself  Archduke  of 
Austria  still,  though  he  calls  himself  "  Emperor  of 
Austria  "  as  well.  But  by  German  custom,  the  children 
of  a  duke  or  count  are  all  called  dukes  and  counts  for 
ever  and  ever.  In  this  way  the  Prince  of  Wales  is 
called  "  Duke  of  Saxony."  And  in  the  same  way  all 
the  children  of  an  Archduke  of  Austria  are  archdukes 
and  archduchesses. 

Formally  and  historically  then,  the  taking  of  an  here- 
ditary imperial  title  by  the  Archduke  of  Austria  in  1804, 
and  the  keeping  of  it  after  the  prince  who  took  it  had 
ceased  in  1806  to  be  King  of  Germany  and  Roman 
Emperor-elect,  was  a  sheer  and  shameless  imposture. 
But  it  is  an  imposture  which  has  thoroughly  well  served 
its  ends.  Those  ends  were  doubtless  two.  One  was  to 
keep  up  for  the  hereditary  "  Emperor  of  Austria  "  some- 
thing like  the  European  position  of  the  elective  Emperor 
of  the  Romans.  In  this  the  success  of  the  Austrian 
House  has  been  perfect,  and  more  than  perfect.  All 
history  has  been  confused  by  it.  In  other  like  cases 
it  is  enough  if  the  modern  imitation  is  taken  for  the 
thing  which  it  imitates.  Smithson  is  satisfied  if  he  is 
taken  for  Percy,  Williams  if  he  is  taken  for  Wynn. 
Nobody  thinks   that  the  old   Percies  were   Smithsons. 


PREFACE.  XV 

But  people  do  think  that  the  old  Roman  Emperors  were 
Emperors  of  Austria.  The  imitation  has,  in  most  men's 
thoughts,  not  only  taken  the  place  of  the  original ;  it  has 
caused  the  original  to  be  forgotten.  And  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  taking  of  the  title  was  further  meant 
to  help  towards  destroying  the  historic  rights  of  Hun- 
gary, Bohemia,  and  the  other  states  of  the  Austrian 
House,  towards  forming  them  into  an  "empire  of 
Austria."  This  attempt  has  partly  succeeded,  partly 
failed.  Since  the  Atisgkicli  of  1867  it  is  fully  under- 
stood that  the  kingdom  of  Hungary  and  its  partes 
annexes  are  not  parts  of  any  "empire  of  Austria."  The 
"empire  of  Austria"  and  the  kingdom  of  Hungary 
together  make  up  the  "  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy." 
It  is  not  easy  to  make  out  what  or  where  the  "empire 
of  Austria  "  is  ;  but  it  would  seem  to  mean  all  those 
lands  which  are  held  by  the  King  of  Hungary  in  some 
other  character  than  that  of  King  of  Hungary.  If  so, 
while  the  ancient  kingdom  of  Hungary  is  one  of  the 
most  stable  things  in  the  world,  the  modern  "empire  of 
Austria"  is  one  of  the  most  fleeting.  Its  boundaries  are 
always  changing,  because  it  is  always  winning  and 
losing  territory.  To  say  nothing  of  endless  changes 
before  1804,  the  princes  of  Austria  have,  since  that  year, 
lost  the  Polish  land  of  New  Galicia  ;  they  have  lost  and 
gained  again  the  Polish  city  of  Cracow,  taken  at  the 
last  partition  in  1795.  They  have  lost  and  gained  again 
a  large  territory  in  Germany,  namely  Tyrol  and  parts 
of  Carinthia  and  Carniola.  They  have  lost,  but  not 
gained  again,  Constance  and  some  smaller  outlying 
German  territories.  They  have  gained,  lost,  and  gained 
again,  the  archbishopric  of  Salzburg.  They  have  lost 
and  gained  again  Trent,  Aquileia,  Istria,  Gorizia,  and 
other  points  on  the  borders  of  Germany,  Italy,  and  the 
Slavonic  lands.  In  undoubted  Italy  they  have  gained, 
lost,  gained  again,  and  lost  again,  Milan  and  the  rest 
of  Lombardy.  They  have  lost,  gained  again,  lost  again, 
gained  again,  and  lost   again,  Venice  and    the  rest  of 


XVI  PREFACE. 

Venetia.  They  have  lost  and  gained  again  all  Dalmatia, 
first  gained  in  1797.  They  have  gained  Ragusa  in 
1 8 14,  and  Spizza  in  1878,  and  they  have  practically 
gained  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  in  1878,  though  those 
lands  have  not  been  formally  annexed.  What  more 
may  be  gained  or  lost  in  future  changes  we  cannot  say  ; 
but  at  any  rate,  those  parts  of  the  dominions  of  the 
House  of  Austria  which  do  not  belong  to  the  crown 
of  Hungary — those  which  we  might  conveniently  call 
Nungary — as  they  are  many  of  them  very  modern  in 
possession,  have  also  been  shifting  in  possession  beyond 
everything  else  in  Europe.  A  power  largely  so  modern, 
everywhere  so  shifting,  which  moreover  has  grown 
everywhere  by  wiping  out  ancient  historic  rights  and 
cherished  national  memories,  whatever  else  it  may  be, 
can  hardly  be  called  ancient,  venerable,  or  conservative. 

I  remarked  some  time  back  that  the  boundaries  of 
the  kingdom  of  Hungary  have  hardly  changed  for  some 
centuries.  That  they  have  changed  so  little  is  one  of 
the  most  notable  things  in  the  whole  story,  and  one 
of  the  most  characteristic  of  the  ways  of  the  House  of 
Habsburg.  For  the  common  sovereigns  of  Hungary  and 
Austria  have  twice  gained  territory  which  they  claimed, 
and  could  claim,  in  no  other  character  than  that  of  Kings 
of  Hungary.  But  when  they  had  gained  it,  they  did 
not  join  it  on  to  the  kingdom  of  Hungary,  but  kept  it 
among  those  territories  which  were  not  Hungarian. 
This  happened  to  the  so-called  kingdom  of  Galicia  and 
Lodomeria,  the  share  taken  by  Maria  Theresa  Queen  of 
Hungary  in  the  first  partition  of  Poland  in  1772  ;  and 
also  with  the  kingdom  of  Dalmatia,  taken  by  Francis 
King  of  Hungary  in  1797.  Both  these  lands  were 
claimed  on  no  other  ground  than  that  they  had  been 
held  by  Hungarian  kings  ages  before  ;  but  they  have 
never  been  restored  to  the  Hungarian  kingdom.  Neither 
were  they  made  fiefs  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  which 
was  then  still  in  being.  In  what  character  or  by  what 
right  they  were  held,  it  is  not  easy  to  see. 


PREFACE.  xvii 

As  things  now  stand  in  the  lands  of  which  M.  Leger 
has  written  the  history,  the  first  thing  that  strikes  us  is 
that  those  nations  which  rose  against  the  House  of 
Habsburg  in  1848-9  are  those  which  are  at  present 
satisfied  with  its  dominion,  while  those  by  which  its 
authority  was  restored  are  those  which  at  present  com- 
plain of  it.  The  Habsburg  princes  were  driven  out  by 
the  Germans  of  Vienna  and  the  Magyars  of  Budapest  ; 
they  were  brought  back  by  Slaves  and  Roumans,  backed 
by  the  great  Slavonic  power  of  Russia.  The  present 
sovereign  of  Hungary  and  Austria  reigns,  with  the  good 
will  of  their  inhabitants,  over  lands  conquered  for  him 
by  Nicolas  of  Russia  and  Jellacic  of  Croatia.  It  is  by 
the  favour  of  Slavonic  and  Rouman  helpers  that  he  was 
able  to  reign  over  Germans  and  Magyars.  It  is  now  the 
Germans  and  Magyars  who  are  satisfied  ;  the  Slaves  and 
Roumans  who  complain.  The  Atisgleich  between  Hun- 
gary and  Austria  was  made  wholly  in  favour  of  the 
dominant  Magyar  and  German  races  ;  they  have  got 
their  own  rights,  and  their  chief  object  now  is  to  hinder 
other  nations  from  getting  their  rights  as  well.  In  Hun- 
gary the  common  sovereign  reigns  as  a  lawful  king, 
crowned  with  the  crown  of  Saint  Stephen,  according  to 
the  law  of  Hungary.  But  the  people  who  have  thus  won 
their  ancient  independence  are  stirred  to  wrath  when  the 
people  of  Bohemia  demand  that  the  common  sovereign 
shall  do  the  same  justice  to  Bohemia  which  he  has  done 
to  Hungary.  They  ask  that  in  Bohemia  too  he  shall 
reign  as  a  lawful  king,  crowned  with  the  crown  of  Saint 
Wenceslaf,  according  to  the  law  of  Bohemia.  But  at  this 
demand  Germans  and  Magyars  are  very  angr)^  The 
Magyars  too,  having  won  its  rights  for  the  kingdom  of 
Hungary  proper,  refuse  any  like  concession  to  iXxo:  partes 
minexcB  of  Croatia  and  Transsilvania.  There  is  therefore  of 
course  dissatisfaction  at  both  ends  of  the  "  monarchy ;  " 
but  the  dissatisfaction  naturally  takes  two  forms.  It 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  irruption  of  the  Magyars 
split  the  Slavonic  race  asunder,  parting  the  Czechs  and 


xvill  PREFACE. 

Poles  to   the   north    of   Hungary    from  the    Serbs    and 
Croats  to  the  south  of  it.     The  Northern  Slaves  stand 
alone  ;  they  could  not  form  a  distinct  power,  and  there 
is  no  neighbouring  power  of  their  own   race  to  which 
they  could  wish  to  transfer  their  allegiance.    The  Poles  of 
Galicia  have  assuredly  no  wish  for  annexation  by  Russia, 
and  the  Bohemians  would  never  wish  for  it  unless  it  should 
be  the  only  alternative  to  annexation  by  Germany,  Union 
with  Hungary  and  Austria  is,  as  things  now  stand,  de- 
sirable for  both  Czechs  and  Poles.   All  that  the  Bohemians 
wish  is  that  the  union  should  be  made  on  lawful  terms, 
like  the  union  between  Hungary  and  Austria,  that  the 
rights  of  their  ancient  kingdom  should  be  respected,  as 
the  rights  of  the  kingdom  of  Hungary  have  been.    They 
wish,  in  short,  to  have  a  common  sovereign  with  Austria, 
but  not  to  be  merged  in  an  "  Austrian  empire."     The 
position    of  the  Southern  Slaves  and   the   Roumans    is 
different,  and  it  has  been  altogether  changed  since  the 
establishment    of  independent    Slavonic    and    Rouman 
powers  on  the   lower    Danube.      As  long  as    the  only 
choice   lay  between   Turk   and  Austrian,   the  Austrian 
was   naturally  preferred   as  the  lesser  evil  of  the   two. 
But  now  that  the  Slavonic  and  Rouman  subjects  of  the 
Austrian    have    independent   neighbours    of  their   own 
race  close  on  their  borders,  a  third  chance,  better  than 
either,  offers  itself.     The  position  of  these  lands  now  is 
exactly  what  that  of  Milan  was  up  to  1859,  and  Venice 
up  to   1866,  what  that  of  the  other   Italian  lands  still 
kept  by  the   House  of  Austria  still  is.      The   Rouman 
of  Transsilvania  has  no  tie  to  Hungary,  whose  people 
do    all  that   they  can  to  wipe  out    his  national  being  ; 
his    tie  is  to    the   free   Rouman   kingdom    beyond    the 
border.     The  Serb  in  the  like  sort  looks  to  the  Serbian 
kingdom   and  the    Montenegrin    principality ;    there    is 
nothing  to  awaken  in  him  any  loyalty  or  affection  either 
to  Vienna  or  to  Budapest.      Bosnia  and  Herzegovina 
rose  against  the  Turk  ;  their  reward  has  been,  not  union 
with    their   free    neighbours,   but   bondage    under   the 


PREFACE.  xix 

Austrian.  Heroic  Montenegro  has  since,  in  1814  and 
in  1878,  been  actually  despoiled  in  favour  of  the  House 
of  Habsburg,  the  rich  man,  as  usual,  taking  the  poor 
man's  ewe  lamb.  And  it  is  a  very  strange  thing  that 
many  who  rejoiced  each  time  that  the  Austrian  was 
driven  out  of  Milan  and  Venice,  look  quite  calmly  on 
his  continued  occupation  of  Ragusa  and  Cattaro,  an 
occupation  equally  unjust  in  itself  and  equally  a  thing 
of  yesterday. 

Nothing  is  harder  in  England  than  to  get  real 
knowledge  as  to  the  state  of  things  in  these  lands. 
Ordinary  travellers,  ordinary  newspaper  correspondents, 
are  constantly  misled  and  mislead  others.  They  see 
only  particular  parts  of  the  country  or  particular  classes 
of  people,  and  from  them  they  leap  to  very  false  conclu- 
sions about  other  countries  and  other  classes.  Because 
the  ruling  races  in  Hungary  and  Austria  have  nothing 
to  complain  of,  they  fancy  that  the  same  must  be  the 
case  with  those  parts  of  the  "  Austro-Hungarian  mon- 
archy "  which  are  neither  Austrian  nor  Hungarian. 
Very  hard  names  are  often  hurled  in  English  papers 
at  men  and  nations  who  are  simply  standing  up  for 
their  lawful  and  historic  rights  against  a  foreign  in- 
truder. The  newspaper  correspondents  again  find  that 
it  does  not  do  to  publish  news  which  is  at  all  unpleasant 
to  the  powers  that  be.  So  to  do  would  cut  them  off  from 
any  means  of  official  information.  And  there  is  some- 
where in  the  dominions  of  the  House  of  Habsburg  a 
wonderful  power  of  hiding  the  truth.  Inconvenient 
facts  are  in  a  strange  way  hindered  from  getting  known. 
The  gallant  stand  made  by  the  mountaineers  of  Cri- 
voscia — cruelly  parted  from  their  brethren  in  Monte- 
negro in  1 8 14 — against  Austrian  encroachments  on  their 
chartered  rights  was  hardly  heard  of  in  this  country. 
Yet  the  struggle  against  the  oppressor  was  twice  waged 
— successfully  in  1869,  unsuccessfully  in  188 1-2.  The 
former  struggle  comes  within  the  range  of  ]\I.  Leger's 
book  ;  the  second  came  later.    M.  Leger's  book,  showing, 


XX  NOTE  BY  TRANSLATOR. 

as  it  does,  the  way  in  which  the  various  lands  concerned 
came  under  a  common  rule,  and  what  is  the  real  and 
lawful  position  of  each,  ought  to  do  something-  to  lessen 
popular  ignorance  and  indifiference  about  lands  whose 
people  deserve  English  sympathy  fully  as  much  as  those 
of  other  lands  about  which  there  has  been  more  talk. 

EDWARD  A.  FREEMAN. 


NOTE   BY   TRANSLATOR. 

The  following  translation,  made  from  the  third  edition  of 
the  original  work,  is  not  meant  for  scholars,  who  will  read 
what  M.  Leger  has  to  say  in  his  own  words,  but  rather  for  the 
general  public,  which  does  not  care  to  study  the  history  of  a 
foreign  country  in  a  foreign  language.  Though  pains  have 
been  taken  to  render  the  author's  meaning  as  closely  as  pos- 
sible, it  does  not  pretend  to  be  literal,  and  an  apology  is  due 
to  M.  Leger  for  the  omission  of  one  or  two  short  passages,  and 
some  allusions  which  seemed  especially  meant  for  his  country- 
men. 

Had  it  been  possible  for  me  to  read  Mr.  Freeman's  Pre- 
face before  I  began  my  work,  I  should  have  tried  to  avoid  the 
use  of  the  phrase  "Austrian  empire"  as  a  translation  oiTetat 
Autrichien ;  as  it  is,  I  have  used  it  in  the  same  way  as 
Englishmen  use  the  expression  "  British  empire."  Students  of 
Austro-Hungarian  history  will  find  the  constant  use  of  a  good 
atlas  a  necessity,  and  it  has  therefore  not  been  thought  needful 
to  reproduce  M.  Leger's  maps — only  one,  and  that  an  ethno- 
graphical map,  being  added  to  the  work. 

I  am  indebted  for  the  list  of  books,  and  for  the  note  on 
the  pronunciation  of  certain  letters  in  the  Slavonic  languages, 
to  Mr.  W.  R.  Morfill,  of  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  to  whom  I 
wish  here  to  express  my  thanks  for  the  kindness  and  patience 
with  which  he  has  helped  me  throughout  my  work,  by  reading 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  FOR    THE    USE   OF  STUDENTS,     xxi 

over  the  proofs  in  order  to  correct  the  spelling  of  the  Slav- 
names.  That,  in  spite  of  all  his  care,  I  have  allowed  errors 
to  remain,  I  am  only  too  well  aware ;  but  that  is  my  fault,  and 
does  not  lessen  my  debt  to  him.  My  thanks  are  also  due  to 
Professor  W.  J.  Ashley,  of  Toronto  University,  Canada,  who 
has  read  the  whole  of  the  translation,  and  helped  me  in  many 
ways ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  to  Mr.  Freeman  for  his 
Preface.  It  only  remains  for  me  to  express  my  regret  that 
M.  Leger  has  not  found  a  translator  better  fitted  for  the  task 
of  arousing  interest  in  the  subject  he  has  so  closely  at  heart. 

THE   TRANSLATOR. 
Oxford,  1889. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY    FOR   THE    USE   OF   STUDENTS. 

Handbitch  der  Geschichte  QLsterrekhs.     4  vols.     Berlin.     By  M.  Krones, 

Professor  of  History  at  the  University  of  Gratz.     1876. 
History  of  the  House  of  Austria  from  Rudolf  of  Habsburg  to  the  Death  of 

Leopold  II.     Archdeacon  Coxe. 
Slavische  Altertlmmer.     Schafarik.     Prague,  1862. 
Prehistoric  Boheinia  (in  Chekh).     Wocel.      Prague,  1869. 
The  First  Slavonic  j\lonarchies  of  the  A'orth-West  (in  Russian).      Uspen- 

sky.     St.  Petersburg,  1872. 
The  Slavs  of  t}ie  South  (in  Chekh).     Anonymous.     Prague,  1864, 
Geschichte  der  Sudslavischefi  Literatur.     Schafarik.     Prague,  1864-1865. 
Literary  History  of  the  Slavotiic  Races  (in  Russian).     Pypine  and  Spaso\-itch. 

St.  Petersburg,  1865. 
History  of  the  Chekhs  from  their  Origin  to  the  year  1526.     Palacky.     5  vols. 

Prague.     (This  Chekh  work  has  been  translated  into  German.) 
History  of  the  Toiun  of  Prague  (Chekh  ;  has  been  translated  into  German). 

4  vols.     Tomek. 
Huss  und  Hierotiymus.     Helfert.     i  vol.     Prague,  1S63. 
History  of  Bohemian    Literature  (Chekh).     Tieftrunk.     2   vols.     Prague, 

1874-1876. 
Geschichte  der  Bbhmische  Briider.     Gindely.     2  vols.     Prague,  1857- 
Geschichte  des  Dreiszigfiihrigen  Kriegs.     Gindely. 
Manual   of   Hungarian    Poetry    (Hungarian).     Toldy.      2    vols.     Pesth, 

1855- 


XXll  RULES  FOR  PRONUNCIATION. 

Geschichte  der    Ungrischen   Dichtung  von  den   dltesten   Zeilen   bis  Alex. 

Kisfahidy.     Toldy.     Pesth,  1863. 
Rudolf  II.  2md  seine  Zeit.     Gindely.     2  vols.     Prague,  1 862-1865, 
Chants   Heroiques  et  Chansons  poptdaires  des   Slaves  de   Boherne.     Louis 

Leger.     Paris,  1866. 
Le  Poite  de  la  Revolution  Uongroise,  Alexander  Pet dji.    Chassin.     Bruxelles, 

i860. 
Le  Monde  Slave.     Louis  Leger.     Paris,  1873. 
The  Magyars.     Arthur  Patterson.     2  vols.     London,  1869. 
Slavonic  Literature.     W.  R.  Morfill,     London,  1883. 
CEstreich  und  Deutschland  im  Revolutions  Krieg.      Sybel.      Dusseldorf, 

1862. 
Geschichte  des  neunzehnten  Jahrhunderts  seit  den  Wiener  Vertrdgen.     Ger- 

vinus.     Leipzig,  1855-1866. 
Geschichte  (Esterreichs  voni  Ausgange  des  Wiener  October- Aufstandes,  1848. 

Helfert.     Prague,  1876. 
History  of  Russia  from  the  Earliest  Times.     Rambaud.    Translated  by  L. 

B.  Lang,  1879. 
La  Nouvelle  Geographic  Universelle.     Vol.  IIL     Elisee  Reclus. 
Histoire  de  la  Formation  Territoriale  des  Etats  de  P Europe  Centrale.    Himly. 

Paris,  1876. 
An  Historical  and  Geographical  Atlas  of  the  Austrian  Possessions.   Spriiner. 

Gotha,  1866. 


RULES    FOR    PRONUNCIATION. 

The  following  rules  for  the  pronunciation  of  some  Slavonic 
words  will  be  found  useful : — 

Polish. 

c  =  ts ;  cz  =  ch  ;  sz  =  sh  ;  rz  and  z  =  zh  ;  the  English  z  in 
azure. 

Croatian  and  Slovenish. 

c  =  is ;    c  =  an   intermediate   sound    between   Is   and   c/t  ; 
"c  ■=  ch  ;  's  =  sh  ;  z  =  zh,  as  in  Polish. 

Bohemian. 

c  =  ts ;  c  =  ch  ;  r  =  rzh  ;  s  =  sh  ;  z  =  zh,  as  in  Polish. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface       v 

Translator's  Preface xx 

Bibliography  for  the  Use  of  Students          .        .        .         .  xxi 

Rules  for  Pronunciation xxii 


CHAPTER    I. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  State  and  its  Constituent 
Elements. 

How  the  Austro-Hungarian  State  was  formed  .....  I 
Austro- Hungary  has   neither  geographical    nor   natural   unity,    nor 

natural  frontiers  ..........  3 

Statistics  of  the  various  nationalities  .......  5 

Preponderance  falsely  attributed  to  the  Germans  ;  their  distribution 

among  the  various  provinces        .......  6 

The  Magyars,  the  Slavs,  and  the  Latins   .....  7 

Persistency  and  vitality  of  the  national  languages  in  Bohemia  and 

Hungary     ...........  9 


CHAPTER   n. 

Primitive  Times — The  Barbarians— The  Roman  Rule- 
German  Invasions. 

Pre-historic  times — Celts  and  Illyrians — Conquest  by  Rome      .         .        11 
The  Dacians — The  Marcomanni  in  Bohemia — Organization  of  the 

Roman  conquest.         ...  ......        14 

The  Goths — Diocletian  and  Christianity 17 

The  Huns— Attila— The  Lombards  .         .         .         .         .         .         .21 


XXIV  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   III. 

The  Migrations  of  the  Slavs. 

PAGE 

Origin  of  the  Slav  race — Tlie  Chekhs — The  Slavs  of  the  Danube       .       25 
The  Slavs  and  the  Avars — Samo  (627-662)       .         .         .         .         .27 

The  Servians  and  Croatians  (634-638)      ......       30 

Manners,  customs,  and  religion  of  the  Slavs     .....       33 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Moravia  and  the  Slav  Apostles. 


The  Magyars — Their  origin  and  arrival  in  the  valley  of  the  Danube 
— Their  invasions  (892-955)         ...... 

Manners  and  religion  of  the  Pagan  Magyars      .... 

The  first  princes  of  the  dynasty  of  Arpad — Christian  Hungary— St 
Stephen  (997-103S)     

The  laws  of  St.  Stephen  ........ 


39 


The  Chekhs,  Moravians,  and  Carinthians — Legendary  rise  of  Bo- 
hemia ........... 

Moravia— Rostislav    (846)— Cyril    and    Methodius    (863-885)— The 

Slav  Church        .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         -41 

Svatopluk — The  ruin  of  Moravia  and  of  the  Slav  Church  (870-907)  .       45 

The  Slovenes — The  Croats  under  a  national  dynasty  (780-1090)        .       51 


CHAPTER   V. 

Formation  of  the  Magyar  State. 


57 
61 

64 
67 


CHAPTER   VI. 

Hungary  under  the  Successors  of  St.  Stephen. 

The  first  successors  of  St.  Stephen — Ladislas  the  Holy  (1077-1095)  .       71 
Koloman  (1095-11 14) — Croatia  united  to  Hungary  (i  102) — German 

colonies — Wars  with  Galicia  and  Venice      .  •       .         .         .         .74 
Andrew  II.  (1205-1235)— The  Golden  Bull 79 


CONTENTS. 


Struggles  against  the  Mongols  (1239-1241)  and  the  House  of  Austria 

— Last  kings  of  the  race  of  Arpad  {1235-1301)     ....       83 
Progress  of  civilization     .........       87 


CHAPTER   VII. 

Bohemia  under  the  Earlier  Premyslides. 

The  first  Christian  princes — St.  Adalbert  (874-997)  ...  89 

Bretislav  and  the  institution  of  primogeniture  (1037-1055) — Vratislav 

first  king  of  Bohemia  (106 1-1092)        ......        92 

Premysl  Otokar  I.,  hereditary  king  ( II 97-1230) — Vacslav  I.  (1230- 

1253) — Invasion  by  the  Tartars  (1242)  .....       98 

Premysl  Otokar  II.  (1250-1278) — .Struggle  against  Rudolf  of  Habs- 

burg — Glory  and  decay  of  Bohemia     ......      103 

Humiliation  and  death  of  Premysl  Otokar  II.  (127S)         .         .         .      108 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

The  Later  Premyslides. 

The   later   Premyslides — Vacslav  II.    king  of  Bohemia  and  Poland 

(1278-1305) — Vacslav  in.  { 1 305-1306) 112 

Bohemia  under  the  Premyslides — Bohemia  and  the  Empire        .         .      119 
Bohemian  institutions — German  colonies  .         .  .  .  .  .122 

Relision — Arts — Civilization 124 


CHAPTER    IX. 

The  Early  History  of  the  Austrian  Group — The 
House  of  Babenberg  (973-1246). 

The    Eastern    March — The    first    Babenberg^ — Henry    lasomirgott 

(973-1177) '27 

Leopold   V.    (1198-1230)  —  Frederick    the    Fiijhter   (1230-1246)  — 

Acquisition  of  Styria  and  part  of  Carnicla  .  .  .  .  .132 
The  Laws  of  Austria  under  the  Babenbergs— TJie  Landeshohcit — 

The  towns — Literature 136 


XXVI  CONTEXTS. 


CHAPTER   X. 


The  Austrian  Group  under  the  First  Habsburgs 
(1273-1493). 

PAGE 

Rudolf  I.  invests  his  sons  with  Austria  and   Styria  (1273-1298) — 

Frederick  the  Handsome  (1330-1358) — Acquisition  of  Carinthia  .  141 
Rudolf  IV.  (1358-1365) — The    Privilegium   Magus — Acquisition  of 

Tyrol  (1363) — Dismemberment  of  Austria  (1379)         .  .  .  145 

Albertine  and  Leopoldine  branches  (1379-1457)        ....  149 

Frederick  of  the  Empty  Purse  (1406-1439) 151 

Frederick  v.,  emperor  (1440-1493) 152 


CHAPTER   XL 

Bohemia  under  the  House  of  Luxemburg — ^John  Hus 
(1310-1415). 

John  of  Luxemburg  (1310-1346) — Annexation  of  Lusatia  and  Silesia  155 
Charles  IV.  (i 346-1 378) — Prosperity  of  the  kingdom — The  Golden 

Bull 161 

Vacslav  IV.  (1378-1419) — Revolts  of  the  nobles — Religious  troubles  164 

John  Hus  (1369-1415) — The  Council  of  Constance  (1415)  .         .  169 


CHAPTER  XH. 

Bohemia  and  the  Hussite  Wars. 

Formation  of  the  sects  of  the  Utraquists  and  Taborites  (1415-1419)  .  176 
Beginning    of    the    struggle — Sigismund    (1419-1437) — ^John   Zizka 

(1420) 180 

Negociations  with    Poland — Sigismund   Korybutowicz  (1420) — The 

Four  Articles — Death  of  Zizka  (1424)  .         .....     185 

Procopius  the  Great — Victory  of  Ousti  (1427) — Hussite  invasion  of 

Hungary  and  Germany  (1424-1431)     ......      189 

Council  of  Basle  (1431) — Anarchy  in  Bohemia — Battle   of  Lipany 

(1434) 194 

The  Compactata  (1436) — The  result  of  the  Hussite  wars — Death  of 

Sigismund  (1437) 198 


CONTENTS.  XXVU 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

Bohemia  under  George  of  Podiebrad  (1437-1471) — The 
Jagellon  Dynasty  (1471-1526). 

PAGE 

Albert  of  Austria  (1438-1439) — Vladislav   the    Posthumous  (1439- 

1447) — George  of  Podiebrad  {1444) 203 

The  reign  of  George  of  Podiebrad  (1457-1471) — Bohemia  at  peace   .  207 

Wladyslaw  Jagiello  (1471-1516) — Increased  power  of  the  nobles        .  213 

Louis  (1516-1526) — The  Reformation  of  Luther  in  Bohemia     .         .  215 

CHAPTER   XIV. 

Hungary  under  the  House  of  Anjou  (1310-1388) — 
The  Elective  Monarchy  (1388-1444). 

Charles  Robert  of  Anjou  (13 10-1342) 218 

Louis  the  Great  (1342-1382) — The  Hungarians  in  Italy — Wars  with 

Venice  and  Naples      .........  220 

State  of  Hungary  under  the  House  of  Anjou     .....  223 

Sigismund  of  Luxemburg  (1382-1437)       ......  225 

Albert  of  Austria — Wlaydslaw  Jagiello  (1438- 1444) .         .         .         •  229 

CHAPTER   XV. 

John  Hunyady— Mathias  Corvinus — The  Jagellons 
(1444-1526). 

Ladislas  the  Posthumous — John  Hunyady  governor  of  the  kingdom  .  232 

Mathias  Corvinus  (1458-1490) — War  with  Bohemia  and  Turkey        .  236 

Hungary  under  Mathias  Corvinus     .......  242 

Wladyslaw  II.  (1490-1516) — Verboczy — Revolt  of  the  Kurucs  (1514)  244 
Louis  II.  (1516-1526) — Loss  of  Belgrade  (1521) — Battle  of  Mohacs 

(1526) 248 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

The  Austrian  Emperors. 

Maximilian  I.  (1493-1519) — The  Austrian  marriages  .  .  .  251 
Ferdinand  I.  (1519-1564)— The  Reformation  in  Austria  .  .  ,  255 
Maximilian  II.  (1564-1576)      ........     259 


XXVlll  CONTENTS, 

PAGE 

Rudolf  II.  (1576-1611) — The  Counter-Reformation  in  the  Austrian 

states.         ...........     261 

Mathias  (1612-1619)— Ferdinand    II.  {1619-1637)— Ferdinand  III 
(1637-1657) — Influence  of  the  Jesuits  .         .... 

Leopold  I.  (1657-1705) — Siege  of  Vienna — Sobieski  (1683) 

Austria  under  Leopold  I. — Army — Finances    .... 

Administration — Legislation — Literature 

Joseph  I.   (1705-1711) — Charles  VI.    (1711-1740) — The    Pragmatic 

Sanction     ...........     277 


263 
266 
271 
275 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

Bohemia  under  the  First  Austrian  Kings  (1526-1620). 

Ferdinand    I.    (1526-1564)  —  Growth   of  the   royal   power  —  The 

monarchy  becomes  hereditary      .......      283 

Revolts   and   persecutions   of  the    Protestants — Destruction   of  the 

municipal  franchises    .........      286 

Maximihan   II.    (1564-1576)— Rudolf  II.   (1576-16x2)— Wars   with 

Mathias  and  the  Utraquists  .......     289 

Mathias  (1612-1619)— The  defenestration  at  Prague  (1618)        .         .     292 

Bohemia  in  revolt — The  Thirty  Directors 296 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Bohemia  Conquered  (1619-1740). 

Ferdinand  II.  (1619-1637) 298 

Battle  of  the  White  Mountain  (1620) — Political  and  religious  re- 
action (1620-1627)      .         .         .         .         ,         ,         .         .         .  300 

The   Thirty   Years'   War — Wallenstein — The    Swedes    in    Bohemia 

(1634-1648) 306 

Decay  of  Bohemia  in  the  17th  and  iSth  centuries       ....  310 

CHAPTER   XIX. 

The  Dismemberment  of  Hungary  (1526-1629). 

Ferdinand  I.  and  Szapolyai  (1526-1540) — The  Turks  in  Hungary 

(1529-1562) 314 

Martinuzzi — The  Turkish  rule 318 

■''".  7  "'^""■-ation  in  Hungary — Rudolf  (1576-1612)  .         .         .         .  322 

Sigismun^  .   .•      urinces-^Gabriel  Bethlen  (1613-1629)  .         .  325 


C0NTEN7S. 


XXIX 


CHAPTER   XX. 

Hungary  in  Revolt  and  Hungary  Reconciled  (1629-1740). 

I'AGE 

The  Rakoczy  family  in  Transylvania — Leopold  I.  in  Hungary  (1629- 

1705) 331 

Expulsion  of  the  Turks     .         .         ,         .         .         .         .         .         .  337 

Francis  Rackoczy  (1700-17 II) 338 

Hungary  reconciled — The  Treaty  of  Passarowitz  (i 718)  .  .  .  341 
The    Servian     colonists — The    military    frontiers — The    Treaty    of 

Belgrade  (1739) 343 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

Maria  Theresa  (1740-1780). 

AVar  of  the  Austrian  succession — Loss  of  Silesia — Treaty  of  Aix-la- 

Chapelle  (1748) 348 

Kaunitz — The  French  alliance — The  Seven  Years'  War  (1756-1763).  352 

Partition  of  Poland — Acquisition  of  Galicia  (1772)    ....  356 
Acquisition  of  Bukovina  (1775) — War  of  the  Bavarian  Succession 

(1779) 361 


CHAPTER   XXn. 

Bohemia,  Hungary,  and  Austria  under  Maria  Theresa. 


Bohemia  ....... 

Hungary — "  Moriamur  pro  rege  nostro"  . 
The  peasant  question — The  military  frontiers 
Reforms  in  administration  and  education 
Finance — Trade — The  army     . 


364 
366 

370 
373 
379 


CHAPTER    XXin. 
Joseph  IL  (17S0-1790). 


Character  of  Joseph  H 

Church  reforms         ...... 

Administrative,  judicial,  and  economical  reforms 


^S- 


-35 
259 


XXX  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Foreign  policy — The  Fiirstenbund  (1785) — Revolt  of  the  Netherlands 

— War  with  Turkey  (1788)  .         . 391 

Hungary  and  Bohemia  in  Joseph's  reign  ......  394 

Leopold  II.  (1790-1792) 398 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 

Francis  II.  (1792-1S35) — Wars  against  the  Revolution. 

Austria  in  1792  ..........  401 

Loss  of  Belgium — Acquisition  of  Western  Galicia  (i 791-1795)  .         .  404 

Loss  of  Lombardy — Acquisition  of  Venice  and  Dalmatia  (1797)  .  406 

Marengo — Treaty  of  Luneville  (i  801) 410 

Austria  after  the  Peace  of  Luneville 414 


CHAPTER   XXV. 

Francis  II. — Wars  against  Napoleon  to  the  Treaty  of 

SCHONBRUNN  (180I-1809). 


Francis  II.,  emperor  of  Austria  (1804)       .         .         .         .         . 
New  war  against  Napoleon — Treaty  of  Pressburg  (1805)   . 
Surrender  by  Francis  II.  of  the  title  of  Roman  Emperor  (1806) 
Campaign  of  1809 — Insurrection  in  Tyrol  .         .         .         . 

Aspern  and  Wagram — Treaty  of  Schonbrunn  (1809). 
The  French  in  the  Illyrian  provinces         .         .         .         .         . 


420 

423 
428 

431 
434 
438 


CHAPTER   XXVL 

Francis  II. — Austria  after  the  Peace  of  Schonbrunn 
(1809-1815). 

Alliance  with  Napoleon  .  ........  442 

Russian  campaign — Reaction  against  Napoleon — Austria  in  alliance 

with  his  enemies  (1813)         .         .  .         .  .  .  .  .  445 

Campaign  of  1813 451 

Battle  of  Leipzig  (1813) — The  Austrians  in  Paris       ....  454 

The  Congress  of  Vienna  (1814-18 15)         .         .         .         .         •         .  458 

Austria  after  the  Treaty  of  Vienna 462 


CONTENTS.  xxxi 

CHAPTER   XXVII. 

Francis  II.  and  Mettermch  (1815-1835). 

PAGE 

Metternich        ...........  466 

Austria  at  the  head  of  the  reaction  in  Europe — Meetings  of  Congress  469 

The  Eastern  Question  (1820-1829) 471 

Polish,  Itahan,  and  German  affairs  .......  476 

CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

Hungary  and  the  Slav  Countries  (i 790-1835). 

Hungary  from  1 790-1815  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .481 

Development  of  public  spirit  in  Hungary — The  Diet  of  1825 — Sze- 

chenyi,  Deak,  Kossuth         .         .         .         .         .         .         ,         ,     491 

Revival  of  the  Slavs — Bohemia — Kollar    ......     495 

The  Southern  Slavs — Ljudevit  Gaj — Panslavism        ....     500 

CHAPTER   XXIX. 

Ferdinand  IV. — Austria  on  the  Eve  of  the  Revolution 
(1835-1848). 

The  Staats-conferenz  .........     504 

Polish   affairs  —  Occupation  of  Cracow  —  The   Galician   massacres 

(1846) 506 

Progress  of  public  opinion — The  Bohemian  Diet — Havlicek       .         .510 
PubHc  opinion  in  Hungary — The  Magyars  and  Slavism     .         .         .514 
The  races  in  Hungary       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         ,         '519 

Public  opinion  in  Vienna .         .         .         ,         .         .         ,         ,         .521 

CHAPTER   XXX. 

The  Revolution  of  1848. 

Fall  of  Metternich — The  first  Austrian  constitution  ....  524 

Concessions  to  Bohemia — Palacky  and  the  Frankfort  parliament        .  527 

The  Slav  congress  at  Prague    ........  529 

Galicia  and  Italy c         .         .  531 


XXXll  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXXr. 

The  Hungarian  Revolution. 

PAGE 

The  first  Hungarian  ministry — Tiie  15th  of  March — The  Croats  and 

Servians 533 

Jelacic 535 

The  war 537 

The  Russian  intervention 539 


CHAPTER   XXXH. 

The  Revolution  in  Vienna. 

The  parliament  of  Vienna — The  October  Days — Repression      .         .     542 
The  Diet  of  Kromerice — Abdication  of  Ferdinand  IV.        .         .         .     546 


CHAPTER  XXXni 

Francis  Joseph — The  Reactionary  Period. 

The  new  constitution  (March  4th,  1849)    ......  548 

The  reactionary  period  (1850-1860) — The  Concordat  (1855)       .         .  552 

Austria  and  Germany — The  Crimean  War  (1854-1855)      .         .         .  555 

The  war  in  Italy — Loss  of  Lombardy  (1859)      .....  55S 


CHAPTER   XXXIV. 

Attempts  at  Constitutional  Government — War  with 
Prussia  (1860-1866). 

Return  to  constitutional  government — Patents  of  i860  and  1862         .     561 
Opposition  of  the  nationalities  to  the  centralizing  reforms — Insurrec- 
tion in  Poland  (1863) 564 

War  against  Prussia  and  Italy — Austria  excluded  from  Germany — 

Loss  of  Venetia  (1866) 567 


CONTENTS. 


XXXlll 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

The  Dual  Constitution  (1867). 


Austria  after  Sadowa         ...... 

Agreement  with  Hungary — The  dual  government  (1867) 

Slav  protests  against  the  dual  government. 

Liberal  reforms         ....... 

Resistance  of  Bohemia — Declaration  of  1S6S 

The  Galician  resolution  (1S68) — Insurrection  of  the  Bocchesi  (1869) 

Grievances  of  the  Servians,   Croats,    and    Roumanians   against  the 

Hungarians 586 


PAGE 

572 
573 
577 
580 
582 
584 


CHAPTER   XXXVI. 

AUSTRO-HUNGARY    FROM    1867-1878. 

Efforts  towards  federation — The  Hohenwart  ministry  (1871)      .         .  589 

Negociations  with  Bohemia — The  fundamental  articles      .         .         .  590 

Federation  checked  ........••  593 

Present  state  of  Austro-Hungary — Economical  progress  and  liberal 

reforms       ...........  594 

The  Eastern  Question  reopened — Uncertain  policy  of  Austria  (1874- 

1878) 600 


CHAPTER   XXXVn. 

AuSTRO-HUNGARY    FROM   1878-1? 


The  occupation  of  Bosnia         ........  603 

Political  consequences  of  this  occupation  ......  609 

The  Taaffe  ministry  and  policy  of  conciliation  towards  Bohemia         .  612 

Hungary.  ...........  614 


CHAPTER   XXXVni. 

Organization  and  Statistics  of  Austro-Hungary. 

Common  affairs .  .617 

Organization  of  Cisleithania       ........     61S 

Organization  of  Hungary .         .         .         .         .         .         •         .         .621 


XX  XIV  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Army  and  navy         .         ,         .         .         .         .         .         .         •         •  622 

Population 626 

Natural  resources      ..........  629 

Means  of  communication — Industry  and  commerce    .         .         .         .631 

Finances  ............  633 

Religion 634 

Intellectual  culture  .......         ....  635 


Table  of  Sovereigns  who  have  reigned  over  the  States 
which  either  now  compose  the  austro-hungarian 
Monarchy,  or  have  belonged  to  it 638 

Losses  and  Gains  of  the  House  of  Habsburg  from  Rudolf 
of  Habsburg  to  the  Present  Time 644 

Index 649 

Ethnographical  Map  of  Austro-Hungary     .        .        ,        At  end 


ERRATA. 

Page    10,  line  ^,/or  "  form  part  of,"  read  "  annexed  to." 
13,  line  \(>,for  "  Marius,"  read  "  Marcus." 
64,  line  2,yi?r  "  France,"  read  "  Burgundy." 
89,  line  15,  o»izi  "or  Lusatians." 
117,  'Note, ybr  "  Sandomir,"  read  "  Sandomiria." 

360,  line  22,  _/i7r  "  thirteen  hundred  square  miles,"  read  "fifteen  hundred  square 
German  miles." 

362,  line  w^for  "  miles,"  read  "  German  miles." 

363,  line  12,  for  "miles,"  read  "  German  miles." 
399,  line  2,,  for  "  province,"  read  "  duchy." 
473,  line  5,/or  "  Upsilanti,"  read  "  Ypsilanti." 
497,  'Note, /or  "  Chansones,"  read  "  Chansons." 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE    AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN    EMPIRE   AND    ITS    CONSTITUENT 
ELEMENTS. 

Holu  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire  was  formed. 

Notwithstanding  the  great  historic  memories  which  are 
associated  with  the  name  of  the  house  of  Austria,  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  empire  is  one  of  the  youngest  among  European 
states.  It  was  not  founded  till  1804 — till  the  day  when 
Francis  H.,  aware  that  the  German  crown  was  tottering  on 
his  head,  and  that  Napoleon  was  creating  for  his  family  an 
hereditary  empire,  determined  to  secure  for  himself  also  a  title 
of  equal  importance,  in  case  Germany  should  be  lost  to  him. 
Up  to  that  time,  the  various  elements  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
state  had  preserved  their  historic  individuality.  This  had  not 
indeed  always  been  duly  respected  by  the  Habsburgs  in 
practice,  but  in  principle  it  had  never  been  seriously  disputed. 
It  has  been  customary  to  identify  the  history  of  the  various 
states  now  subject  to  the  house  of  Austria  with  the  history  of 
the  house  of  Austria  itself;  this  is  a  mistake  which  was  ex- 
cusable at  a  time  when  the  history  of  a  people  was  supposed 
to  be  contained  in  that  of  its  sovereigns,  but  which  can  no 
longer  be  pardoned.  It  is  now  known  that  nations  have  an 
existence  apart  from  that  of  reigning  families,  and  that  these 
families,  however  illustrious  may  be  their  origin,  are  always 
obliged  at  last  to  subordinate  themselves  to  national  aspira- 
tions. 

B 

1 


2  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  leaders  of  the  French  Revolution  knew  nothing  of  an 
Austro-Hungarian  state  when  they  declared  war  against  the 
king  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary.  When  these  kingdoms  offered 
their  crowns  to  Ferdinand  I.  of  Austria  (1526),  they  had  no 
intention  of  subordinating  their  individuality  to  an  artificial 
union  of  alien  states.  After  a  free  and  glorious  life  under  their 
national  kings,  they  sought  in  a  purely  personal  union — by 
taking  the  ruler  of  a  neighbouring  state  as  their  sovereign 
without  any  change  in  their  constitutions — to  strengthen  them- 
selves against  Ottoman  invasions ;  they  never  dreamed  of  dis- 
appearing, either  in  the  unity  of  the  Austrian  monarchy,  or 
in  that  of  the  empire.  Ferdinand  I.  brought  with  him  only 
his  hereditary  possessions,  Upper  and  Lower  Austria,  Styria, 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  Gorica  (Gorz),  Gradiska,  part  of  Istria  and 
the  Tyrol ;  that  is  to  say,  a  group  of  German  and  Slavonic 
populations,  the  whole  number  of  which  now  hardly  amounts 
to  five  millions,  i.e.  scarcely  a  seventh  of  the  whole  population 
of  the  Austro-Hungarian  empire.  These  states,  moreover, 
were  neither  great  enough,  famous  enough,  nor  far  enough 
advanced  in  civilization  to  justify  them  in  an  endeavour  to 
absorb  or  assimilate  the  two  kingdoms  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary. 

When  he  accepted  the  two  crowns  of  St.  Vacslav  and  St. 
Stephen,  Ferdinand  undertook  to  respect  the  rights  and 
privileges  which  Avere  attached  to  them,  and  he  had  made  a 
similar  promise  with  regard  to  Croatia,  which  was  dependent 
on  the  Hungarian  crown.  Thus  it  was  by  virtue  of  a  contract 
freely  entered  into,  and  with  mutual  obligations,  that  Bohemia, 
Hungary,  and  the  hereditary  provinces  of  Austria  passed  under 
the  common  rule  of  the  same  sovereign. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  at  the  time  of  which  we  are 
speaking,  several  of  the  provinces  which  now  form  part  of 
Austria  still  belonged  to  neighbouring  powers.  Galicia,  for 
example,  formed  part  of  the  kingdom  of  Poland,  from  which 
it  was  not  separated  till  1773;  Dalmatia  was  subject  to  the 
republic  of  Venice  down  to  1797  ;  though  in  both  cases  the 


AN  EMPIRE    WITHOUT  UNITY.  3 

house  of  Austria  has  been  able  to  plead  as  a  justification  for 
"  re-annexation  "  certain  ancient  rights  possessed  by  Hungary 
and  its  dependent  Croatia. 

This  rapid  sketch  will  suffice  to  show  that  Austro-Hungary 
is  essentially  an  empire  based  on  historical  rights.  These 
rights  owe  their  origin  neither  to  conquest  nor  to  successful 
revolutions ;  they  are  rights  the  form  of  which  has  always  been 
respected  by  the  Government,  even  when  it  has  disregarded  the 
spirit. 

Austro-Hungary  possesses  neither  Geographical  Unity, 
Natio7ial  Unity,  7ior  Natural  Frontiers. 

In  the  history  of  this  complex  state  there  is,  then,  to  be 
found  neither  the  manifest  development  of  a  single  great 
nation,  as  in  France  or  Germany,  nor  geographical  unity,  as 
in  Italy,  nor  an  abiding  unity  of  will  and  aspiration,  as  in 
republican  Switzerland. 

Austria  has  no  natural  frontiers,  no  form  determined  before- 
hand by  seas,  by  the  course  of  rivers,  or  by  mountains.  The 
basin  of  the  Danube  certainly  seems  destined  to  become 
the  seat  of  a  great  empire,  but  only  the  middle  portion  of  it 
belongs  to  Austro-Hungary.  Nevertheless,  thanks  to  its  posi- 
tion on  this  river,  Vienna  has  gained  for  itself  one  of  the  fore- 
most places  among  European  capitals,  standing  as  it  does 
almost  exactly  in  the  centre  of  Europe,  at  an  equal  distance 
from  Madrid  and  Moscow,  from  Stockholm,  London,  and 
Constantinople,  from  Hamburg  and  Bucharest. 

As  the  geographer  Reclus  remarks,  the  Danube  and  its 
tributaries  do  indeed  create  a  sort  of  unity,  from  an  hydro- 
graphical  point  of  view,  by  joining  in  the  same  basin  the 
mountains  of  Austria  and  the  plains  of  Hungary  ;  but  a  large 
part  of  the  monarchy  lies  outside  the  Danubian  regions, 
in  the  valleys  of  the  Elbe,  the  Vistula,  the  Dnieper,  and  the 
Adige. 

Moreover,  while  the  sea  Avashes  certain  parts  of  Austro- 
Hungary,  it  does    not  really  belong  to   her.     The  complete 


4  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

possession  of  the  Adriatic  must  sooner  or  later  be  claimed  by 
Italy,  or  by  the  people  who  shall  succeed  in  uniting  the 
Slavonic  groups  of  the  Balkan  peninsula. 

Neither  do  mountain  ranges  form  for  it  a  well-defined 
frontier.  The  great  chain  of  the  Carpathians,  which  covers 
the  north-east  and  south-east,  leaves  the  Bukovina,  Galicia,  and 
Silesia  outside  and  completely  exposed  on  the  north  to  the 
attacks  of  Germany  and  Russia.  Bohemia  is  protected  by 
the  Riesengebirge,  the  Erzgebirge,  and  the  Bohmerwald,  but 
then  Bohemia  is  also  girdled  to  the  south-east  by  the  moun- 
tains of  Moravia,  so  that  it  forms  by  itself  a  real  geographical 
whole  which  may  easily  be  detached  in  thought  from  the 
factitious  unity  of  Austro-Hungary.  Towards  the  south-west, 
however,  the  Austrian  frontier  is  better  defined  by  the  Alps 
(which,  however,  leave  Istria  outside),  by  the  Adriatic,  and  by 
the  parallel  streams  of  the  Save  and  the  Drave. 

If,  however,  this  country  of  ill-defined  boundaries  belonged, 
like  her  neighbour  Germany,  to  a  single  race,  firm,  compact, 
obedient  to  common  traditions,  ready  at  any  sacrifice  to  aim 
at  a  common  future,  the  want  of  natural  boundaries  would 
be  of  small  importance  ;  but  this  is  far  from  being  the  case. 
Besides  having  no  geographical  unity,  Austro-Hungary  presents 
to  us  ethnographically  also  a  picture  of  the  most  complete 
anarchy. 

We  have  already  pointed  out  what  are  the  three  primary 
groups  of  the  empire  :  the  German  and  Slavonic  lands  known 
as  the  Hereditary  Provinces,  the  kingdom  of  Bohem.ia,  and 
the  kingdom  of  Hungary,  with  its  dependency  the  kingdom  of 
Croatia.  The  partition  of  Poland  in  1772  added  to  these  a 
new  element,  Polish  Galicia.  But  even  these  groups,  although 
they  have  historic  individuality,  are  far  from  having  any  real 
unity  in  themselves,  so  that  we  have  to  deal  not  only  with 
such  contests  as  are  produced  by  claims  founded  on  written 
law,  but  also  with  those  to  which,  in  our  own  century,  the  idea 
of  nationality  has  given  birth. 


STATISTICS  OF  NATIONALITIES.  5 

Statistics  of  the  Various  Nationalities. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  understand  the  history  of  these 
various  groups,  their  mutual  relations,  or  the  true  situation  of 
Austro-Hungary,  without  a  clear  idea  of  the  statistics  of  the 
nationalities  who  divide  the  state. 

They  belong  to  four  different  races — the  Slav,  the  Teutonic, 
the  Ural-x\ltaic,  and  the  Latin,  They  may  be  divided  approxi- 
mately as  follows  : — 

4,370,000  Chekhs. 

2,753,000  Slovaks. 

r.,  /  2,341,000  Poles. 

Slav  race     <  -n   ^i. 

2,774,000  Kuthenes. 

1,500,000  Slovenes. 

\  3)395jOoo  Servo-Croats. 

Teutonic  race     ...      7,000,000  or  8,000,000  Germans. 

600,000  Italians. 


Latin  race ,      ,  „ 

2,640,000  Roumanians 

Ural-Altaic  race...     5,500,000  Magyars. 

These  are  only  approximate  iigures,  for  the  dominant  races 
take  pleasure  in  swelling  their  own  numbers,  while  they  diminish 
those  of  the  less  favoured. 

To  these  different  groups  at  least  one  million  Jews  must  be 
added,  scattered  all  over  the  empire,  and  in  certain  districts 
preserving  all  the  principal  characteristics  of  their  race,  even 
the  use  of  the  Hebrew  tongue.  They  exercise  considerable 
influence  over  the  economic  conditions  of  the  countries  in 
which  they  live. 

These  conflicting  elements  have  not  been  welded  together 
by  time,  as,  for  example,  have  the  Celts,  the  Gallo-Romans, 
the  Franks,  and  the  Iberians  in  modern  France.  They  have 
each  preserved  their  language  and  their  traditions ;  they  live 
side  by  side  without  mingling.  The  life  of  an  organic  body 
consists  in  the  equilibrium  of  the  simple  elements  of  which  it 
is  composed.     If  this  equilibrium  is  destroyed,  the  body  dies. 


6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO'HUNGARY. 

In  like  fashion,  the  life  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  state  depends 
upon  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  the  various  races  which  make 
up  the  empire. 

Preponderance  mistakenly  attributed  to  the  Germans  ;  their  dis- 
tribution among  the  various  Provinces. 

Far  too  prominent  a  position  is  usually  assigned  to  the 
German  population  of  Austria,  and  this  arises  from  want  of 
knowledge  not  only  of  their  numbers,  but  also  of  the  way  in 
which  they  are  scattered  over  the  empire.  To  call  Austria  a 
German  state  is  to  use  a  phrase  which  is  most  misleading. 
The  number  of  Germans  is  said  to  be  seven  or  eight  millions, 
and  this  may  be  raised  to  nine  millions,  if  we  add  to  them 
'those  Jews  to  whom  German  is  the  mother  tongue,  and  still 
higher  if  we  count  in  citizens  of  other  German  states  resident 
in  the  country.  But  these  eight  or  nine  millions  are  far  from 
forming  a  compact  and  homogeneous  body.  The  only  entirely 
German  provinces  are  the  two  Austrias  and  the  duchy  of  Salzburg. 
To  this  compact  mass  the  Germans  of  Styria,  Carinthia,  and  the 
Tyrol,  who  are  mixed  in  these  provinces  with  Italians  and 
Slovenes,  may  be  regarded  as  attached.  Marburg  in  Styria, 
Klagenfurt  in  Carinthia,  and  Neumarkt  in  the  Tyrol  are  the  last 
German  towns  to  the  south.  The  group  formed  by  these  five 
provinces  comprises  at  the  most  3,500,000  Germans,  and  is 
really  the  only  one  which  may  be  considered  as  belonging  to 
the  Greater  Germany  of  Pan-Germanic  enthusiasts.  Should 
they  one  day  form  part  of  that  Greater  Germany  in  virtue  of 
the  principle  of  nationality,  that  principle  would  not  allow 
them  to  drag  with  them  either  the  Slavs  or  the  Italians  of  the 
Tyrol.  Thirty  leagues  divide  the  Germans  from  Trieste, 
which  they  consider  as  their  great  Adriatic  port. 

Next  come  the  Germans  of  Bohemia.  They  are  scarcely 
two-fifths  of  the  population  of  the  kingdom.  They  are 
scattered  along  the  frontiers  of  Bavaria  and  Saxony,  and  the 
towns  of  Budweiss  (Budejovice),  of  Pilsen  (Plzen),  Leitmeritz 
(Litomerice),  and  Reichenberg  mark  the  line  which  separates 


THE   GERMAN  ELEMENT.  7 

them  from  the  Chekhs.  In  Moravia,  where  the  majority  of 
the  population  (nearly  150,000)  is  Slav,  about  50,000  Germans 
occupy  the  north  of  the  province.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
the  Germans  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia  are  more  than  two 
millions ;  but  this  figure  is  small  compared  to  that  of  the  Chekh 
majority,  which  numbers  at  least  4,300,000  souls.  The 
Germans  of  Bohemia,  colonists  or  conquerors,  separated  from 
the  mother-country  by  a  well-marked  geographical  boundary, 
could  never  dream  of  attempting  to  force  into  a  German  union 
that  Slav  majority  which  had  created  and  organized  the  state 
long  before  they  came  to  live  in  it,  some  as  gladly  welcomed 
guests,  others  as  hated  invaders.  The  Germans  can  never 
claim  Bohemia,  as,  for  example,  they  claimed  Alsace,  by  virtue 
of  the  principle  of  nationality;  and  therefore  they  invoke  a 
pretended  historic  right  belonging  to  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 
In  every  other  part  of  the  empire  the  Germans  are  few 
in  number;  they  have  no  special  political  rights  (except 
among  the  Saxons  of  Transylvania,  who  have  ancient  privileges), 
and  owe  the  advantages  they  possess  to  the  universality  of 
the  German  tongue,  to  certain  political  traditions,  or  to  their 
scientific  or  industrial  superiority.  There  are  about  234,300 
Germans  in  Silesia,  114,000  in  Galicia,  27,000  in  Bukovina, 
29,700  in  Carniola,  200,000  in  Transylvania,  and  122,700  in 
Hungary.  There  is  no  doubt  these  figures  make  up  a  respect- 
able total,  but  the  importance  of  this  total  is  singularly 
diminished  when  we  remember  in  what  fashion  these  numbers 
are  scattered  among  Slavs,  Magyars,  and  Roumanians. 

Magyar's,  S/az's,  and  Latins. 

The  Hungarians,  or  Magyars,  as  they  call  themselves,  are 
far  from  occupying  the  whole  of  Hungary ;  the  Slavs  and 
Roumanians  share  it  with  them.  The  INIagyars  are  divided 
into  two  compact  bodies.  The  first  contains  about  4,400,000 
souls;  Hungarian  ethnographers  say  5,000,000.  The  towns 
of  Presburg  (Pozsony),  Kaschau  (Kassa),  and  Munkacs 
form  its  frontier  to  the  north,  and  separate  it  from  the  Slovaks 


8  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

and  Ruthenians.  To  the  east,  a  line  drawn  from  Munkacs 
divides  them  from  the  Ruthenians  and  the  Roumanians  ;  to 
the  south  they  stretch  as  far  as  Arad  and  Szombor,  and  touch 
the  Servians  and  Croats.  The  reasons  why  these  Hungarians 
have  been  able  to  subdue  the  peoples  round  them  are  to  be 
found  in  their  central  position  on  the  Danube,  the  unity  of 
a  group  which  is  greater  than  any  of  those  that  are  near  them, 
and  some  political  and  military  qualities  of  great  importance. 
The  second  Magyar  group,  that  of  the  Szeklers,  wrongly  called 
Sicules  (about  500,000  souls),  is  surrounded  by  Roumanians, 
and  must  doubtless  some  day  be  absorbed  by  them.  But  their 
vitality  is  maintained  by  constant  intercourse  with  the  main 
body,  which  is  the  true  kernel  of  the  kingdom  of  Hungary. 

The  Slavonic  race  occupies  the  north  and  the  south-west 
of  the  empire ;  the  Chekhs,  the  greater  part  of  Bohemia, 
Silesia,  and  Moravia ;  the  Slovaks,  the  north  of  Hungary ;  the 
Poles,  the  north-east  of  Galicia  ;  the  Ruthenians,  the  rest  of 
Galicia,  part  of  Bukovina,  and  some  districts  to  the  north-east 
of  Hungary. 

The  Slavs  to  the  north  are  separated  from  those  to  the 
south-west  by  the  Germans,  the  Magyars,  and  the  Roumanians. 
Their  geographical  division,  and  the  Slavonic  dislike  to  a 
firm  rule,  are  sufficient  to  explain  why,  in  spite  of  their 
numerical  superiority,  they  have  never  been  able  to  conquer 
the  Germans  or  the  Magyars,  nor  even  to  secure  their  own 
admission  to  complete  equality.  The  southern  Slavs  are 
divided  into  two  groups :  the  Servo-Croatians,  who  occupy 
Croatia,  Slavonia,  Dalmatia,  Sirmia,  the  south-western  portion 
of  the  ancient  Banate  of  Temesvar,  and  those  lands  which 
used  to  be  called,  until  quite  recently,  the  Military  Frontier ; 
and  the  Slovenes,  who  inhabit  Carinthia,  Carniola,  and  part  of 
Istria  and  Styria. 

The  Roumanians  are  settled  in  the  south-west  of  Hungary, 
in  Transylvania,  and  the  Bukovina.  The  Italians  form  a 
compact  group  in  Southern  Tyrol,  and  have  colonies  in  all 
the  principal  towns  of  Istria  and  on  the  Dalmatian  coast. 


BOHEMIA   AND  HUNGARY.  g 

Penisteucy  and  Vitality  of  the  National  Languages  in 
Bohemia  and  Hungary. 

The  vitality  and  diversity  of  these  races  is  proved  by  the 
variety  of  literary  languages  in  use  among  them.  These  are 
not  languages  in  such  a  position  of  inferiority  as,  for  example, 
the  Basque,  or  Breton,  in  France,  nor  mere  dialects  such  as, 
for  instance,  are  found  in  Germany  and  Italy ;  but  languages 
complete  in  themselves,  and  fixed  in  their  present  form  by 
constant  use.  Austria  is  a  real  European  Tower  of  Babel. 
In  it  are  published  newspapers  in  German,  Hungarian,  Polish, 
Ruthenian,  Chekh,  Slovak,  Servo-Croatian,  Slovene,  Rou- 
manian, and  Italian.  These  newspapers,  often  written  in  a 
tongue  which  is  only  understood  by  the  people  whose  one 
language  it  is,  frequently  represent  antagonistic  interests  ;  for, 
in  consequence  of  historic  traditions  or  of  the  modern  idea  of 
nationality,  some  of  these  populations  are  more  or  less  openly 
attracted  towards  centres  outside  the  empire ;  Germans 
towards  Germany,  Poles  towards  Poland,  Italians  towards 
Italy,  the  southern  Slavs  to  their  brethren  in  Turkey,  the 
Roumanians  towards  Wallachia.  The  Chekhs  and  Magyars 
alone  find  in  the  empire  the  home  of  their  nation  and  the 
centre  of  their  destiny.  The  two  great  moral  forces  which 
keep  the  other  nations  in  union  A\nth  the  Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy  are,  first,  the  very  antagonism  of  the  attractions 
exercised  upon  them,  and,  secondly,  a  certain  traditional 
loyalty  to  the  dynasty.  To  these  must  be  added  the  spirit  of 
caste,  which,  among  the  servants  of  the  State  and  in  the  army, 
strengthens  an  artificial  patriotism,  and,  at  need,  is  made  to 
supply  its  place. 

The  Emperor  of  Austria  in  State  papers  takes  the  following 
titles  : — Emperor  of  Austria,  King  of  Hungary  and  of  Bohemia, 
of  Dalmatia,  Croatia,  and  Slavonia,  of  Galicia  and  Lodomeria 
(part  of  Galicia)  ;  King  of  Illyria,  Grand-Duke  of  Austria,  of 
Bukovina,  Styria,  Carniola,  and  Carinthia ;  Grand-Prince 
of  Silesia,  Margrave  of  Moravia,  Count  of  Habsburg  and  the 
Tyrol,  etc. 


lO  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Among  all  these  titles,  the  only  ones  which  represent  real 
power  in  the  sovereign  who  bears  them  are  those  of  Bohemia 
and  Hungary, — Bohemia  including  Moravia  and  Silesia,  while 
Croatia,  Slavonia,  and  Dalmatia  form  part  of  Hungary, — and 
yet  the  history  of  the  two  kingdoms  of  St.  Vacslav  and  St. 
Stephen,  and  the  ethnographical  constitution  of  the  provinces 
v/hich  are  ruled  by  the  sceptre  of  the  Habsburgs,  have  been 
almost  entirely  ignored  both  by  the  historians  of  the  old  school 
and  by  ministers  of  State. 


CHAPTER   II. 

PRIMITIVE  TIMES — THE    BARBARIANS  AND    THE    ROMAN    RULE 

GERMAN  INVASIONS. 

Fre-historic  Times — The  Celts — The  Illy^-iatis—Compiest 
by  Rome. 

Very  little  is  known  of  the  peoples  who  inhabited  Austria  and 
Hungary  before  the  Christian  era.  Their  history  began  when 
the  Romans  first  came  into  contact  with  them,  and  even  from 
that  time  the  information  we  receive  is  almost  always  vague  and 
inexact.  The  Romans,  like  the  Greeks,  were  biased  by  their 
prejudices  when  judging  of  barbarous  races,  and  were  in  the 
habit  of  repeating  information  more  or  less  authentic  without 
caring  to  inquire  into  its  truth.  They  cared  little  for  the  early 
history  of  nations,  accepted  all  kinds  of  legends  no  matter  how 
absurd,  and  paid  no  regard  to  languages  which  they  could  not 
understand. 

There  is  no  doubt  Austro-Hungary  was  inhabited  during 
the  Stone  Age ;  this  is  proved  by  the  wrought  flints  found  in 
Bohemia,  Moravia,  Hungary,  Galicia,  and  in  Upper  and  Lower 
Austria.  Bronze  articles  are  also  frequently  found.  Every  one 
has  heard  of  the  interesting  discoveries  made  at  Hallstadt  in 
the  Salzkammergut,  whence  is  derived  the  term  "  Hallstadtian 
Age,"  given  by  anthropologists  to  a  certain  period  in  Alpine 
history.  x\s  primitive  iron  utensils  are  also  found,  we  may 
suppose  these  various  layers  to  indicate  an  uninterrupted 
succession  of  inhabitants  and  civilizations  from  the  first  ages. 


12  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

But  it  is  hard  to  determine  what  was  the  race  which  Hved  in 
these  regions  in  those  early  days  :  were  they  Finns,  Iberians, 
or  Aryans?     No  one  knows. 

If  we  set  aside  the  Greek  legends  about  Illyria  and  the  shores 
of  the  Adriatic,  the  first  race  on  the  soil  of  the  future  Austria 
of  whose  existence  we  have  certain  knowledge  is  the  Celtic. 
After  having  settled  themselves,  at  the  end  of  the  great  migra- 
tion of  the  peoples,  in  the  extreme  west  of  Europe,  the  Celts 
flowed  back  to  the  centre  and  east.  According  to  a  tradition 
which  it  is  easier  to  record  than  to  criticise,  in  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  they  spread  over  the  space  between  the  Rhine  and 
the  Vistula,  under  the  leadership  of  a  chief  named  Sigovesius, 
and  occupied  the  country  of  the  Alps  and  the  basin  of  the 
Danube.  It  is  known  that  in  the  year  335  B.C.  Alexander  the 
Great  received  on  the  Lower  Danube  Celtic  envoys  who  offered 
him  peace  and  friendship.  What  became  of  the  inhabitants 
who  were  conquered  by  the  Celts  ?  Some  took  refuge  among 
the  mountains ;  others  were  lost  among  the  conquering  race ; 
others  (perhaps  the  Slavs)  fled  behind  the  Carpathians,  whence 
we  shall  see  them  return  later  on. 

The  Celts,  under  various  names,  took  possession  of  dif- 
ferent districts.  The  Boii  occupied  Bohemia,  to  which  they 
gave  their  name ;  the  Taurisci  established  themselves  in  the 
country  of  Salzburg,  Styria,  and  Carinthia ;  the  Scordisci  in 
Croatia  and  Slavonia ;  the  Ambrones  towards  the  mouths  of 
the  Vistula.  The  bronze  boars  which  have  been  found  in 
Bohemia  are  looked  upon  as  the  remains  of  Celtic  civilization. 

On  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic  the  tribes  grouped  under  the 
general  name  of  Illyrians  never  blended  with  the  Celts  ;  such 
tribes  as,  for  example,  the  Veneti  (some  have  endeavoured  to 
prove  that  the  Veneti  were  akin  to  the  Slavs),  the  Carni,  and 
the  Japydes.  Their  piracies  attracted  the  attention  of  the 
Romans ;  and  Agron,  their  king,  and  later  on  Teuta,  his 
widow,  were  conquered  and  forced  to  pay  tribute.  In  the 
year  180  B.C.  Aquileia  was  founded,  Istria  became  a  Roman 
province,  and  the  town  of  Tergeste  (Trieste)  was  built  to  serve 


THE   TRIBES  OF  THE  ADRIATIC  COAST.  1 3 

as  a  check  upon  the  vanquished  race.  In  the  year  168  B.C. 
Genthius,  king  of  the  Illyrians,  having  entered  into  an  alUance 
with  Perseus  of  Macedonia,  was  made  prisoner ;  and  in  the 
year  129  b.c.  Illyria  and  Dahnatia  became  Roman  provinces. 
The  persistency  of  classical  culture  and  the  use  of  the  Italian 
language  on  the  Dalmatian  coast  down  to  the  present  time 
are  connected  by  unbroken  tradition  with  this  Roman 
conquest. 

Once  masters  of  the  Adriatic  coast,  the  Romans  gradually 
made  their  way  into  the  interior,  and  found  themselves  in 
contact  with  the  races  wlio  lived  isolated  among  the  mountains, 
such  as  the  Taurisci  and  the  Rhaeti,  who  were  related  to  the 
Etruscans  and  then  occupied  the  Tyrol  of  to-day.  The 
conquering  and  rapacious  spirit  of  the  Romans  made  it 
impossible  for  such  contact  to  be  peaceful.  In  the  year 
115  B.C.  the  consul  Marius  Emilius  Scaurus  attacked  the 
country  of  the  Taurisci.  But  as  they  advanced  northwards 
the  Romans  came  across  German  tribes.  Towards  the  year 
115  B.C.  the  Cimbri,  driven,  it  is  said,  from  their  Baltic  home 
by  the  inroads  of  the  sea,  invaded  the  south,  but  were  repulsed 
by  the  Boii.  They  then  ravaged  the  lands  of  the  Scordisci 
and  the  Taurisci ;  and  when  the  Romans  tried  to  withstand 
this  devastating  torrent,  they  were  defeated  at  Noreia  (in 
Carinthia,  near  Klagenfurt)  by  those  barbarians,  who  were  to 
be  crushed  beneath  the  walls  of  Aix  and  Verona  ten  years 
afterwards  (loi  B.C.). 

From  this  time  the  country  of  the  Alps,  Bohemia,  and  the 
lands  in  the  basin  of  the  Danube  were  continually  threatened 
by  the  German  races.  The  Celts  were  attacked  incessantly 
by  the  Suevi,  Marcomanni,  Quadi,  and  Hermanduri,  and 
were  thus  hemmed  in  by  the  Teutons  on  the  one  side  and  by 
the  Romans  on  the  other.  But  far  from  knowing  how  to  meet 
danger  by  union,  they  weakened  themselves  by  endless 
divisions. 


14  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  Dacians — The  Marcomanni  in  Bohemia — The  Roma)i 
Cotiqiiest. 

"Whilst  the  Marcomanni  were  forcing  their  way  into  the 
country  of  the  Boii,  the  Dacians,  a  people  living  on  the  banks 
of  the  Lower  Danube,  were  forming  a  powerful  state  in  the 
country  which  now  includes  Eastern  Hungary,  the  Banate  of 
Temesvar,  Wallachia,  Moldavia,  the  Bukovina,  and  Transyl- 
vania. To  what  race  they  belonged  has  not  yet  been  decided. 
^Ve  know  that  they  were  a  warlike  people,  agricultural  and 
skilled  in  working  in  metal,  and  that  they  were  possessed  by 
an  enthusiastic  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  which 
gave  them  a  peculiar  energy.  In  the  middle  of  the  first 
century  B.C.,  these  Dacians  had  a  king  called  Berebistas, 
an  ambitious  man,  greedy  of  conquest,  and  ready  to  take 
advantage  of  the  quarrels  of  his  neighbours  in  order  to  in- 
terfere in  their  affairs.  The  Celts  gave  him  a  favourable  oppor- 
tunity ;  war  breaking  out  between  the  Boii  and  the  Scordisci, 
the  latter  begged  for  the  help  of  Berebistas,  marched  with  his 
aid  against  the  Boii,  and  defeated  them  in  spite  of  their  alliance 
with  the  Taurisci.  The  Boii  were  forced  to  abandon  their 
country,  which  long  afterwards  bore  the  name  of  Boioruin 
Deserta,  though  it  was  gradually  repeopled  by  the  Marcomanni 
and  the  Quadi.  Berebistas,  intoxicated  by  triumph,  was  pre- 
paring to  attack  Rome  herself,  when  he  was  assassinated 
(45  B.C.)  during  a  popular  rising,  and  the  power  of  the  Dacians 
fell  with  him. 

After  the  death  of  Ca?sar,  the  tribes  on  the  Adriatic  shores 
imagined  they  might  be  able  to  recover  their  independence, 
and  attacked  the  Roman  colonies ;  but  Octavius  was  not  the 
man  to  leave  such  an  affront  unpunished.  Dalmatians,  Liburni, 
Japydes,  Carni,  Pannonians,  Scordisci,  Taurisci,  one  by  one 
fell  under  his  yoke ;  Siscia  (now  Sisek),  on  the  Save,  received 
a  Roman  garrison,  and  was  united  to  Aquileia  by  a  military 
road.  Later  on,  Siscia  became  one  of  the  great  military  posts 
of  the  Romans,  the  port  for  their  navy  on  tlie  Save,  and  their 


THE  ROMANS  ON  THE  DANUBE.  I  5 

centre  of  action  against  the  Pannonians  dwelling  in  the  lands 
between  the  Save,  the  Danube,  and  the  Alps.  Shortly  after 
this,  the  Dalmatians  also  were  conquered. 

Rome  triumphed ;  but  the  empire  could  not  be  sure  of 
peace  so  long  as  the  Alpine  tribes  remained  independent  in 
their  mountains,  so  long  as  they  could  give  a  helping  hand  to 
the  Germans  in  their  attacks  on  the  common  enemy  of  the 
barbarians.  The  Romans  had  in  Pannonia  a  wide  and  solid 
base  of  operations.  The  Rhaeti,  the  inhabitants  of  the  present 
Tyrol,  and  the  Vindelici,  who  lived  between  the  Inn  and  the 
Lech,  were  attacked  by  two  Roman  armies  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Drusus  and  Tiberius ;  they  were  conquered  after  a 
hard  struggle,  and  became  subjects  of  the  empire  (13  b.c),  and 
most  'of  the  able-bodied  inhabitants  were  incorporated  into 
the  Roman  legions  or  transported  into  other  countries,  the 
mountaineers  being  forced  to  cultivate  the  plain  country. 
To  these  new  provinces  Noricum  was  added  without  a  struggle. 

Henceforward  the  Danube  became  the  frontier  of  the 
Roman  empire.  Behind  this  frontier,  Rome  organized  the 
conquered  territory,  gave  to  it  her  laws  and  her  language,  and 
became  in  time  the  instrument  of  its  conversion  to  Christianity. 
We  cannot  enter  here  into  any  complete  details  of  this  power- 
ful organization.  Pannonia  was  placed  under  the  rule  of  a 
"  legatus  consularis,"  Noricum  under  that  of  a  procurator ; 
later  on,  each  of  these  provinces  was  subdivided.  The  present 
district  of  Carniola  was  the  point  of  contact  between  the 
frontier  of  Italy,  of  Noricum,  and  of  Pannonia. 

Strong  garrisons  of  from  60,000  to  70,000  men  secured 
the  submission  of  the  natives.  The  chief  fortified  towns,  which 
were  at  the  same  time  the  seats  of  government,  were :  in 
Pannonia,  Sirmium  (now  called  Mitrovica),  on  the  Save ; 
Aquincum  (Buda),  on  the  Danube ;  Siscia  (Sisek),  at  the 
junction  of  the  Kulpa  and  the  Save  ;  Vindomina  or  Vindobona 
(Vienna),  on  the  Danube.  The  future  capital  was  held  by  a 
legion,  and,  towards  the  end  of  the  empire,  by  a  squadron  of 
the   Danubian   fleet.     In    Noricum   the  towns   were :    Celeia 


1 6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

(Cilly)  ;  Petovio  (Pettau) ;  and  Laureacum  (Loerch).  The 
latter,  which  was  built  at  the  junction  of  the  Enns  and  the 
Danube,  was  of  special  importance,  owing  to  its  commanding 
the  entrance  to  the  valleys  of  the  Tyrolean  Alps. 

From  a  date  at  least  as  early  as  a.d.  51,  the  Save  and 
the  Danube  were  guarded  by  a  fleet,  which  in  the  time  of 
Vespasian  was  very  largely  increased,  and  put  under  the 
supreme  command  of  an  officer  at  Vindobona. 

Three  main  roads  started  from  Aquileia  :  one  ran  eastwards 
by  Emona  (Lubljania,  Laibach),  Petovio  (Pettau),  Sabaria 
(Stein-am-Anger),  towards  Carnuntum  (Hainburg);  the  second, 
northwards,  crossed  Virunum,  Noreia,  Surontium,  and  Ovilabis 
(Wels?) ;  the  third,  westward,  led  to  Aguntum  (Innichen),  and, 
byway  of  the  Pusterthal,  to  Veldidena  (Witten,  near  Insbriick) ; 
it  then  joined  the  Brenner  main  road  which  went  from  Verona 
to  Augusta  Vindelicorum  (Augsburg).  At  Laibach  a  great 
number  of  secondary  roads  met.  Military  boundary-stones 
can  still  be  seen  in  many  places  at  distances  reckoned  from 
Aquileia,  Milan,  Sirmium,  Bregenz,  and  Augsburg. 

After  their  conquest  of  Pannonia,  the  Marcomanni  found 
themselves  in  immediate  contact  with  the  Romans.  The 
intercourse  of  the  two  nations  was  at  first  peaceful.  The  son 
of  the  prince  of  the  JNIarcomanni,  Maroboduus,  was  even 
educated  at  the  court  of  Augustus ;  but  after  the  conquest 
of  Noricum  and  Rhaetia  these  friendly  relations  gave  way  to 
distrust.  Maroboduus  determined  to  hold  his  dangerous 
neighbours  in  check,  and  with  this  end  in  view  occupied 
Bohemia  and  Moravia  with  large  bodies  of  troops,  and  formed 
an  alliance  with  the  Quadi,  a  German  people  settled  in 
Moravia.  Taught  by  Rome,  Maroboduus  used  against  her 
the  arts  which  he  had  learned  from  her.  He  fortified  his 
capital,  Maroboduum,  and  it  became  the  refuge  of  all  who 
conspired  against  the  foreign  rule ;  and  wishing  to  be  a 
conqueror  himself,  he  attacked  a  large  part  of  Germany.  But 
Rome  would  not  long  tolerate  so  restless  a  neighbour.  She 
declared   war,   and   Tiberius   marched   against    him  (6  b.c.)._ 


DACIA   REDUCED    TO   A   ROMAN  PROVINCE.  IJ 

A  revolt  of  the  Pannonians  and  Dalmatians  obliged  Tiberius 
to  make  peace  and  retrace  his  steps,  and  it  was  the  Germans 
who  finally  undertook  the  task  of  destroying  the  power  of 
Alaroboduus.  After  a  bloody  struggle  he  was  conquered  by 
Arminius  (a.d.  17).  Two  years  afterwards,  when  his  country 
was  invaded  by  the  Goth  Kathvalda,  he  sought  refuge  among 
the  Romans,  and  the  emperor  Tiberius  appointed  Ravenna 
as  his  place  of  residence. 

Up  to  this  time  the  Romans  had  not  penetrated  to  the 
left  bank  of  the  Lower  Rhine  ;  for  that  they  waited  some 
time  longer.  The  kingdom  of  Dacia  had  fallen  into  anarchy 
on  the  death  of  Berebistas,  and  on  the  plain  country  of  the 
basin  of  the  Tisza  (Theiss)  several  wandering  races  had 
appeared  whose  origin  it  is  hard  to  determine — Sarmatae, 
Alani,  Roxolani,  and  Jazyges,  who  gradually  reached  the 
shores  of  the  Danube.  Towards  the  end  of  the  first  century. 
a  king  Decebalus  united  these  scattered  elements  into  a  com- 
pact federation,  obtained  Roman  artisans  and  architects,  built 
fortified  places,  and  worked  the  rich  mines  of  Transylvania. 
Emboldened  by  the  success  of  some  fortunate  expeditions,  he 
attacked  the  Romans,  destroyed  two  armies  sent  against  him 
by  Domitian,  and  obliged  him  to  conclude  a  shameful  peace, 
by  which  Rome  bound  herself  to  pay  tribute  to  the  barbarian, 
and  undertook  to  furnish  him  with  the  workmen  of  whom  lie 
should  have  need  (a.d.  90). 

The  Goths — Diocletian  and  Christianity. 

Terms  such  as  these  Trajan,  Domitian's  successor,  was  not 
likely  to  fulfil.  He  refused  to  pay  the  tribute,  threw  two 
bridges  over  the  Danube  (not  far  from  the  present  town  of 
Orsova),  crossed  the  river,  and  beat  Decebalus  on  the  plains 
of  Temesvar.  He  then  pushed  on  into  Transylvania,  where 
he  forced  Decebalus  to  fight  a  second  time  under  the  -walls 
of  his  capital,  Sarmizegethusa.  The  Dacian  king  was  obliged 
to  make  peace  and  to  give  up  the  conquered  territory,  which 
included  his  own  capital  (a.d.  ioi).     Three  years  afterwards, 

c 


1 8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

lie  tried  to  renew  the  war ;  once  more  vanquished,  he  slew 
himself,  and  Dacia  became  a  Roman  province.  The  colonists 
whom  Trajan  left  on  the  Lower  Danube  are  believed  to  be  the 
forefathers  of  the  Roumanian  nation. 

The  conquest  of  Trajan  marks  the  highest  point  reached 
by  the  Roman  power  in  these  countries.  From  the  beginning 
of  the  second  century  onward,  the  German  races,  who  had 
been  for  a  time  kept  back  by  fear  of  the  Romans,  again 
invaded  the  country,  and  in  the  second  half  of  it  the  waves 
of  this  vast  flood,  which  was  by-and-by  to  cover  completely 
the  whole  empire,  began  to  break  down  its  frontiers.  These 
struggles  belong  to  the  history  of  the  Germans,  We  have 
only  to  do  with  those  results  which  affected  Austro-Hungary, 
only  to  point  out  those  events  which  affected  the  countries 
which  now  occupy  our  attention.  The  Goths  came  down 
from  the  north,  bringing  with  them  the  Suevian  tribes ;  and 
towards  the  year  165  of  our  era,  the  frontiers  of  the  Roman 
empire  were  attacked  on  all  sides  by  the  barbarians,  who 
invaded  Noricum,  Pannonia,  Rhaetia,  and  penetrated  as  far 
as  Aquileia.  In  the  year  170,  the  legate  Vindex  sustained  a 
defeat  which  cost  him  no  less  than  20,000  men.  In  175, 
however,  Marcus  Aurelius  succeeded  in  stemming  the  in- 
vading torrent,  and  was  even  able  to  conclude  an  advantageous 
peace. 

But  this  peace  was  of  short  duration.  Two  years  after- 
wards, the  Marcomanni  and  Quadi  revolted,  and  Marcus 
Aurelius  died  at  Sirmium,  when  on  an  expedition  against 
them.  "  Had  he  lived  a  year  longer,"  says  Marcus  Capito- 
linus,  "  a  third  campaign  would  probably  have  ended  in  the 
vanquishing  of  the  barbarians."  His  son  Commodus  allowed 
the  Vandals  to  settle  on  the  banks  of  the  Upper  Danube,  in 
the  lands  which  now  form  Bavaria  and  Upper  Austria.  For 
some  years  the  current  of  invasion  seemed  as  if  it  were  going 
to  turn  back  upon  the  Upper  Danube  and  the  Main.  But 
the  prestige  of  Rome  had  suffered  greatly  in  these  endless 
struggles,  and  the  time  had  come  when  emperors  were  made 


DIOCLETIAN  AXD    CHRISTIAXITY.  1 9 

and  unmade  by  armies.  Rhaetia  and  Noricum  were  again 
attacked  by  the  Marcomanni,  and  when  Dacia  was  threatened 
1)y  the  Goths  the  emperor  Maximus  tried  in  vain  to  withstand 
them,  and  they  took  possession  of  some  part  of  that  country, 
while  the  Gepidae  and  the  Burgundians  occupied  the  northern 
parts  of  Hungary  and  Transylvania.  Those  Goths  who  were 
settled  on  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  soon  began  to  ravage 
Maesia,  Thrace,  and  Macedonia ;  and  though  they  were 
defeated  at  Nissa  (Nich)  in  Moesia  by  the  emperor  Claudius, 
the  empire  was  obliged  to  abandon  the  whole  of  Dacia  to  the 
invaders  in  274,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  Aurelian.  The 
Goths  were  now  masters  of  the  entire  province,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  found  a  double  kingdom  on  the  shores  of  the  Lower 
Danube  and  the  Black  Sea.  That  of  the  Westgoths  (Visi- 
goths) included  Transylvania,  Wallachia,  Moldavia,  and 
Bessarabia  ;  that  of  the  Eastgoths  (Ostrogoths)  lay  between 
the  Dniester  and  the  Dnieper,  on  lands  which  now  form  part 
of  Russia.  It  then  seemed  as  if  the  German  element  was 
destined  to  dominate  in  these  Slav  lands. 

The  soil  of  Austro-Hungary  gave  to  Rome  more  than  one 
emperor.  Decius  was  a  Pannonian.  Probus  came  from 
Sirmium,  and  it  was  he  who  introduced  the  vine  into  Pannonia. 
Diocletian  was  a  Dalmatian.  He  retired  to  his  native  country, 
to  Salona,  where  the  ruins  of  his  palace  still  exist,  part  of  the 
modern  town  lying  within  them.  The  name  of  Spalato  (Spljet 
in  Slav),  derived  from  Palatium,  even  without  these  ruins, 
would  be  enough  to  recall  the  splendours  of  the  imperial 
dwelling-place.  His  reign  was  marked  by  his  persecution  of 
the  Christians.  From  the  first  century  onwards,  fervent 
adherents  to  Christianity  were  to  be  found  on  the  shores  of 
the  Adriatic,  and  along  the  Save  and  the  Danube.  According 
to  tradition,  St.  Mark  evangelized  Aquileia  and  consecrated  as 
its  first  bishop  St.  Hermagoras,  whose  name  is  still  popular 
among  the  Slovenes ;  the  Apostle  St.  Luke  is  said  to  have 
preached  in  Dalmatia,  and  Andronicus,  one  of  the  seventy 
disciples  of  Christ,  to  have  been  the  first  bishop  of  Sirmium. 


20  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

However  that  may  be,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century 
Christian  communities  and  an  organized  clergy  are  to  be  found 
in  all  the  larger  towns  of  Rhaetia,  Noricum,  Pannonia,  and 
Dalmatia.  Under  Diocletian,  Lauriacum,  Siscia,  Sabaria, 
Petovio,  and  Sirmium  were  especially  remarkable  for  the 
fervour  of  their  faith  and  the  constancy  of  their  martyrs. 

Diocletian  reorganized  the  government  of  the  Alpine  and 
Danubian  provinces.  He  divided  Rhaetia  into  two  (Rhaetia 
Prima,  Rhaetia  Secunda,  the  latter  including  also  Vindelicia) ; 
Noricum  into  two  (Noricum  Ripense,  Noricum  Mediterraneum) ; 
Pannonia  into  three,  with  Carnuntum,  Sirmium,  and  Valeria  as 
their  chief  towns. 

There  is  no  need  to  relate  here  how  the  empire,  after 
having  been  divided  between  Constantine  and  Licinius,  on 
the  death  of  the  latter  was  reunited  under  Constantine  (323). 
By  the  edict  of  Milan,  Constantine  guaranteed  the  free  exercise 
of  their  religion  to  the  Christians,  and  the  Church  was  able 
openly  to  organize  itself  In  the  course  of  the  fourth  century 
Aquileia  and  Sirmium  became  the  seats  of  archbishops,  to 
whom  the  neighbouring  bishops  were  subject.  At  Sirmium 
(a.d.  380)  and  at  Aquileia  (a.d.  381)  were  held  councils  in 
which  the  doctrines  of  Arius,  which  had  made  great  progress 
in  Pannonia,  were  condemned. 

Constantine  divided  the  empire  into  four  prefectures : 
those  of  the  East,  of  lUyria,  of  Italy,  and  of  Gaul  The  two 
Rhaetias  were  included  in  that  of  Italy  \  Dalmatia,  Pannonia, 
and  Noricum  in  that  of  Illyria.  The  prefect  resided  at 
Sirmium  (Mitrovica). 

During  the  reign  of  Constantine,  several  bands  of  Sarmatae, 
led  by  their  king  Rausimond,  came  from  the  borders  of  the 
Sea  of  Azof,  settled  themselves  on  the  banks  of  the  Lower 
Danube,  and,  aided  by  the  Jazyges,  repeatedly  ravaged  the 
Roman  provinces  (319-322).  The  emperor  repulsed  them. 
Later  on,  the  Sarmatae  sought  help  from  Rome,  and  Constan- 
tine helped  them  to  repulse  the  Goths.  Later  still,  we  find  a 
band  of  Jazyges,  chased  by  the  Sarmatae,  crossing  the  Danube 


THE  HUNS  AND    THE    GOTHS.  21 

and  settling  themselves  as  guests  and  colonists  in  Thrace  and 
Macedonia.  From  this  time  onwards  the  slow  but  steady 
immigrations  of  these  barbarians  continued,  and  led  up  to  the 
great  invasion  of  the  Slavs,  Avars,  and  Hungarians.  Under 
Constantius  (356),  the  Alemanni,  Quadi,  and  Sarmatae  ravaged 
Rhaetia  and    Pannonia,  but  were   repulsed   with    heavy  loss 

(356-359)- 

In  364,  another  Pannonian,  Valentinian,  was  chosen 
emperor.  He  divided  the  empire  with  his  brotli^r  Valens, 
himself  keeping  the  three  western  prefectures,  with  Milan 
and  Sirmium  as  his  capitals,  while  Valens  took  the  east  and 
resided  at  Constantinople.  Valens  had  to  beat  back  Athanaric, 
the  king  of  the  Goths ;  Valentinian,  to  repel  the  Quadi. 
Goths  and  Quadi  united  to  attack  the  Pannonian  provinces, 
and  Sirmium  had  great  difficulty  in  holding  her  own  against 
them.  Valentinian  was  in  treaty  with  the  barbarians  when  he 
suddenly  died. 

The  Huns — Attila — The  Lombards. 

Thanks  to  the  greater  strength  of  her  organization  and 
to  the  spread  of  Christianity  and  civilization,  Rome  had 
hitherto  been  able  to  restrain  and  absorb  the  races  which 
pressed  her  on  all  sides ;  but  to  these  was  now  added  a  new 
element,  hitherto  unknown  in  Europe,  endowed  with  formidable 
energy,  well  disciplined,  and  more  to  be  dreaded  than  any- 
thing which  had  been  hitherto  seen.  The  Huns  had  long 
lived  on  the  great  plains  which  stretch  between  the  Don 
and  the  Caspian  Sea.  In  375,  the  year  of  Valentinian's 
death,  they  attacked  their  neighbours  the  Ostrogoths,  crossed 
the  Dniester,  spread  over  the  kingdom  of  the  Visigoths,  and 
forced  them  back  upon  the  Danube.  The  Visigoths  begged 
for  shelter  within  the  boundaries  of  the  empire,  and  were 
received ;  but,  being  ill-treated  by  the  Roman  officers,  they 
repaid  this  hospitality  by  revolt,  and  marched  against  Valens, 
who  perished  in  the  battle  of  Adrianople  (378).  Theodosius 
put  a  stop  to  their  successes,  and  by  wily  treaties  incorporated 


22  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

some  of  them  in  the  Roman  army,  while  he  scattered  the  rest 
over  the  provinces  of  Thrace,  Maesia,  and  Asia  Minor.  Those 
of  Thrace  remained  faithful  and  defended  the  empire  against 
the  Huns. 

After  the  destruction  of  the  two  kingdoms  of  the  Goths, 
the  Huns  occupied  the  whole  of  the  country  between  the 
Dnieper  and  the  Danube ;  they  ended  by  crossing  the  latter 
stream  and  taking  possession  of  a  part  of  Pannonia.  Their 
invasions  Jiad  driven  away  the  various  races  whom  they  had 
met  on  their  road ;  but  in  the  perpetual  changes  of  this  epoch, 
they  had  no  time  to  form  new  states,  and  pushed  on  to  the 
attack  of  Italy.  On  the  death  of  Theodosius,  the  empire  was 
divided  between  his  sons  Honorius  and  Arcadius  (395), 
and  was  never  again  united.  The  two  rival  divisions  quarrelled, 
and  the  Huns  made  use  of  these  quarrels  to  offer  their  services 
to  the  one  who  would  pay  them  best.  The  emperor  Theo- 
dosius n.  was  obliged  to  give  them  an  annual  tribute  of 
350  pounds  of  gold,  afterwards  increased  to  700  pounds. 

In  the  year  437,  on  the  death  of  their  king,  Ruja  or 
Roas,  the  command  of  the  Huns  fell  to  his  nephew,  Attila 
or  Etzel,  whom  the  Middle  Ages  called,  in  their  terror,  the 
Scourge  of  God.  He  united  his  people  more  closely,  and  led 
them  on  terrible  expeditions  against  Pannonia,  Maesia,  Thrace, 
and  Macedonia,  before  invading  Italy  and  Gaul.  By  him 
Sirmium  was  destroyed,  and  it  has  never  since  been  able  to  rise 
from  its  ruins.  In  the  year  447  the  empire  abandoned  Sirmia 
to  Attila,  and  undertook  to  pay  him  a  heavy  tribute.  His  two 
expeditions  into  Italy  and  Gaul  are  well  known.  He  returned 
to  die  in  his  camp  between  the  Danube  and  the  Theiss 
(Tisza). 

The  Hungarians,  who  belong  to  the  same  family  of  nations 
as  the  Huns,  see  in  Attila  one  of  their  most  glorious  ancestors. 
Some  of  their  historians  praise  him  enthusiastically.  In  the 
thirteenth  century,  the  chronicler  Kezai  divided  his  Gesta 
Uiaigaro/'um  into  two  books  :  the  Arrival,  which  is  that  of 
Attila;  the  Return,  which   is   that   of  Arpad   (see  chap.  v.). 


THE  EMPIRE   OF  ATTILA.  23 

The  modern  historian  Boldenyi  exclaims  :  "  Who  does  not 
see  in  him  a  forerunner  of  Napoleon  ?  When  a  prince  has 
no  Homer,  says  Fenelon,  it  is  because  he  is  not  worthy  to  have 
one.  If  that  be  true,  what  shall  we  say  of  Attila,  who  had 
twenty  Homers,  who  is  renowned  in  every  nation  of  Europe, 
and  whom  Raphael  himself  has  not  disdained  to  paint?"  To 
this  day-  the  "Attila"  is  the  national  dress  of  the  Magyar 
nobleman.  By  a  strange  freak  of  fortune  the  secretary  of 
Attila,  a  citizen  of  Petovio,  was  the  father  of  the  last  of  the 
Caesars,  Romulus  Augustulus. 

The  empire  of  Attila  did  not  outlive  him ;  his  sons  were 
unable  to  defend  it  against  the  Germans,  and  were  obliged  to 
return  to  the  first  home  of  their  race  on  the  shores  of  the 
Black  Sea.  The  Ostrogoths  remained  masters  of  Pannonia ; 
the  Visigoths  and  the  Gepidae,  of  the  basin  of  the  Theiss  and 
of  Transylvania. 

The  Roman  empire  was  soon  to  disappear.  There  re- 
mained to  it  outside  Italy  only  Dalmatia,  Rhaetia,  and 
Noricum  ;  the  Alemanni  and  the  Thuringians  ravaged  its 
provinces  and  settled  themselves  beyond  the  Danube,  while 
the  other  German  races  continued  alternately  to  advance  and 
retire.  By  this  time  the  Marcomanni  and  the  Quadi  have 
disappeared,  and  the  Rugi  have  taken  their  place  in  JMoravia 
and  Lower  Austria;  the  Heruli  are  in  possession  of  Higher 
Hungary;  the  Ostrogoths  of  Pannonia  press  on  into  Maesia, 
and  in  476  Odoacer  destroys  the  Empire  of  the  West. 

Theodoric  took  possession  of  Italy  and  extended  his  rule 
over  Dalmatia,  Noricum,  and  Rhaetia.  The  Germans  who  were 
settled  in  the  latter  province  recognized  his  authority ;  but  for 
them  the  country  would  have  contained  nothing  but  ruiiis. 
In  the  following  century  Justinian  avenged  the  Western 
Empire,  and  reconquered  these  provinces,  together  with  Italy. 
A  new  people,  the  Lombards,  had  lent  him  aid  in  these 
expeditions,  and  were  settled  by  him  in  Pannonia  and  Noricum, 
which  they  had  to  defend  against  the  Gepidae.  Their  king, 
Alboin,  sought   allies  in   this  struggle   among   the   Avars,   a 


24  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

people  akin  to  the  Huns  (565),  and  with  their  help  drove 
out  the  Gepidae.  Soon  after,  the  emigration  of  the  Lombards 
into  Italy  left  these  Avars  sole  masters  of  the  Danubian 
territory. 

This  emigration  of  the  Lombards  into  Italy  put  an  end 
to  the-  ceaseless  wanderings  of  the  German  races  over  the 
Danubian  lands.  Like  a  whirlwind,  they  had  in  turns  passed 
over  them  without  creating  either  an  empire  or  a  civilization  ; 
they  had  entirely  destroyed  all  trace  of  Roman  culture,  and 
had  then  turned  southwards  to  seek  the  country  "  Wo  die 
Citronen  bliihn."  One  or  two  fertile  districts  only,  such  as 
the  Tyrol  with  its  mountains,  Salzburg,  and  Upper  Austria, 
had  tempted  them  to  remain.  The  Avars  might  have  been 
able  to  found  something  more  lasting ;  but  as  the  Germans 
retired,  they  were  followed  by  a  migration  more  important, 
that  of  the  Slavs,  who  were  to  bring  new  life  to  the  countries 
of  the  Elbe  and  Danube. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    MIGRATIONS    OF    THE    SLAVS. 

Origin  of  the  Slav  Race — The  Chekhs — The  Dauubian  Slavs. 

Notwithstanding  the  numerous  researches  of  the  present 
century,  the  origin  of  the  Slav  races  is  still  wrapt  in  mystery. 
Traces  of  them  have  been  sought  for  in  the  basin  of  the  Danube 
and  of  the  Upper  Elbe,  long  before  the  time  when  they  reall}' 
make  their  appearance  in  history.  We  cannot,  in  a  book  of 
this  kind,  insert  a  whole  series  of  conjectures  which  are  based 
only  on  philological  inductions.  One  fact,  however,  is  certain, 
and  that  is  that  when  the  Slavs  first  appear  they  are  not  a  con- 
quering race.  They  occupied  and  defended  against  the  Finns 
the  immense  plains  which  stretch  behind  the  Carpathians,  the 
Vistula,  and  the  Dnieper ;  broken  up  into  separate  tribes,  and 
caring  little  to  enter  into  any  relations,  peaceful  or  warlike, 
with  either  Romans  or  Teutons,  they  long  remained  unknown. 
They  had  no  Caesar  like  the  Gauls,  no  Tacitus  like  the 
Germans,  to  relate  their  history  or  search  their  annals.  Per- 
haps they  were  known  to  the  ancient  world  under  the  myste- 
rious names  of  Veneti  and  Sarmatae ;  perhaps  some  of  them 
might  have  been  found  among  other  nations  of  whom  we  do 
possess  some  information  more  or  less  authentic,  such  as  the 
Huns,  Goths,  etc.  We  know  nothing  certain,  owing  to  the 
little  attention  which  the  ancients  paid  to  ethnography  and 
language.  All  we  can  say  is,  that  gradually  as  the  Germans 
advanced  southwards  and  eastwards,  the  Slavs  occupied  the 


26  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

lands  they  abandoned,  and  the  countries  between  the  Elbe  and 
the  Oder  were  at  one  time  inhabited  by  the  Slavs,  who  again, 
later  on,  were  to  disappear  before  German  reconquest. 

At  an  unknown  date,  but  doubtless  towards  the  middle  of 
the  fifth  century,  another  branch  of  the  Slavs,  the  Chekhs 
(Cechy),  left  Galicia  proper,  and  penetrated  into  the  mountain 
quadrilateral  now  known  as  Bohemia.  History  finds  but  little 
that  is  true  among  the  legends  that  are  told  of  this  migration. 
But  these  legends  are  so  dear  to  the  hearts  of  the  Chekh 
nation,  and  play  so  great  a  part  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
which  even  now  it  has  to  carry  on,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
pass  them  over  in  silence.  According  to  these  traditions,  there 
were  formerly  three  brothers,  Cech,  Lech,  and  Rous.  Lech, 
at  the  head  of  the  Slav  tribe,  quitted  the  home  of  his  race, 
reached  Bohemia,  and  there  gave  his  name  to  a  new  land.  A 
tradition,  which,  however,  has  nothing  to  support  it,  makes 
Mount  Rip,  near  the  town  of  Roudnice  (Roudnitz),  the  first 
halting-place  of  the  Slavs  in  Bohemia,  Believers  even  point 
out  tlie  very  spot  where  the  great  ancestor  {praotec)  of  the  race, 
Cech,  was  buried.  According  to  the  same  story,  Cech  was  a 
native  of  Greater  Croatia  ;  that  is  to  say,  of  the  country  lying 
at  the  foot  of  the  Carpathians,  towards  what  is  now  Galicia. 
From  this  mythical  personage  is  tra<]itionally  derived  a  race- 
name,  which  no  one  has  yet  been  able  to  explain,  that  of 
Cech  (Chekh).  Curiously  enough,  the  Latin  chroniclers  of  the 
Middle  Ages  were  altogether  ignorant  of  this  name,  and  per- 
sisted in  calling  the  people  who  bore  it  Bohemians,  and  thus 
the  Slavs  of  Bohemia  inherited  the  name  of  the  Boii  whom 
they  had  displaced.^ 

The  Slavs  of  Moravia,  no  doubt,  soon  followed  in  the  track 
of  their  kinsfolk ;  then  came  those  Slavs  who  had  hitherto 
remained  peacefully  behind  the  Carpathians,  but  who  now 
gradually  invaded  first  Upper  Hungary  and  Lower  Austria  on 
all  sides,  and  then  Wallachia,  Moldavia,  and  Transylvania, 
where  they  came  in  contact  with  the  few  remaining  Dacians, 
*  Compare  the  use  of  the  term  Britons  for  Englishmen. 


THE  SLAVS  AND    THE  AVARS.  2/ 

who  had  been  Romanized  by  the  Roman  colonists,  and  blendine 
with  them  formed  the  first  elements  of  the  Roumanian  nation. 
Although  the  history  of  these  Slav  migrations  remains  obscure, 
they  seem  to  have  had  a  distinct  character  of  their  own  which 
distinguishes  them  from  the  German  migrations. 

The  Slavs  and  the  Avars — Samo  (627-662). 

The  Germans  had  invaded  countries  which  had  been  con- 
quered by  the  Romans,  and  ruled  over  peoples  whom  they 
had  found  there ;  the  Slavs,  on  the  other  hand,  took  posses- 
sion of  lands  which  the  Germans  had  abandoned.  They  had 
no  need  to  do  so  by  force  of  arms ;  their  invasion  was  entirely 
peaceful.  But  they  were  not  long  allowed  to  remain  in  quiet 
possession  of  that  which  they  had  so  easily  gained  ;  they  were 
obliged  to  defend  it  against  most  pitiless  invaders,  among 
whom  were  the  Avars  (Obri).  The  Avars  first  conquered  the 
Slav  tribe  of  the  Dudlebes  in  the  present  Galicia,  between  the 
Bug  and  the  Styr ;  then,  led  by  their  chagdn,  the  terrible 
Bajan,  a  new  Attila,  they  crossed  the  Carpathians  and  con- 
quered the  tribes  of  Moravia  and  Bohemia.  Encouraged  by 
this  success,  their  attacks  soon  reached  Pannonia  and  the 
Frank  kingdom  (563-568).  During  these  invasions  the  Slavs 
had  to  suffer  from  the  Avars  what  the  Germans  had  previously 
had  to  bear  from  the  Huns.  The  plains  of  Hungary  lying 
between  the  Danube  and  the  Theiss  became  the  seat  of  the 
Avar  power,  and  large  fortified  camps,  called  Hrings,  sheltered 
the  invaders  against  all  attack.  The  Slavs  had  to  pay  them 
tribute,  and  to  furnish  them  with  soldiers,  and  at  times  were 
transplanted  by  them  from  one  district  to  another. 

It  was  thus  that  Pannonia  and  Noricum  were  peopled  by 
Slav  colonists,  who  became  the  ancestors  of  the  Slovenes. 
These,  so  to  speak,  Avarized  Slavs  came  down  as  far  as  Friuli, 
where  their  descendants  are  to  be  found  to  this  day,  speaking 
a  language  which  still  bears  traces  of  some  Ural-Altaic  in- 
fluence. Those  Slavs  who  settled  in  the  valley  of  the  Enns 
and  of  the  Mur  became  known  as  Carinthian  Slavs. 


28  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

Sure  of  the  obedience  or  help  of  the  Slavs,  Bajan  next 
ventured  to  attack  the  Eastern  empire,  conquered  Sirmia  (584), 
and  made  it  the  base  of  operations  against  Byzantium,  and, 
later  on,  against  Dalmatia  and  Istria.  In  599,  he  reached 
Constantinople,  and  might  have  taken  it  had  not  a  pestilence 
broken  out  in  his  army.  This  second  Attila  died  in  603. 
Quarrels  broke  out  among  his  heirs ;  the  Slavs  who  had  been 
conquered  demanded  their  freedom,  and  prepared  for  revolt ; 
and  it  was  at  this  moment  that  a  mysterious  personage,  named 
Samo  the  Merchant,  first  appeared.  He  is  said  by  Fredegar 
to  have  been  a  Frank,  who  had  come  to  trade  among  the 
Slavs.  A  later  writer,  an  anonymous  historian  of  the  con- 
version of  the  Bavarians  and  Carinthians,  calls  him  a  Carinthian 
Slav ;  but  his  nationality  is  left  uncertain  by  all  authentic 
documents,  though,  according  to  Fredegar,  he  was  a  native  of 
the  pagus  Semionagiis  (the  country  round  Soignies  in  Hai- 
nault?).  The  most  that  we  can  guess  is  that  he  belonged  to 
some  Slav  tribe  subject  to  the  Franks,  and  mistakenly  identified 
with  them,  as  in  our  day  the  Chekhs  are  often  confounded 
with  the  Germans  of  Austria,  or  the  Croats  with  the  Hun- 
garians, However  that  may  be,  Samo,  whether  he  were  Slav, 
Frank,  or  Roman  by  birth,  made  common  cause  with  the 
people  who  offered  him  their  leadership ;  his  rule  spread  over 
all  the  tribes  of  the  Vends  and  Slavs,  and,  says  Fredegar, 
"  for  five  and  twenty  years  he  governed  them  happily.  In  his 
reign  the  Vends  fought  several  battles  against  the  Huns,  and, 
owing  to  his  prudence  and  courage,  were  always  victorious. 
Samo  had  twelve  wives  chosen  from  the  nation  of  the  Vends, 
and  had  twenty-two  sons  and  fifteen  daughters."  Gradually 
Samo  became  so  dangerous  a  neighbour  to  the  Franks,  that 
there  could  not  fail  to  be  a  collision.  "  In  the  year  630,  the 
Slavs,"  writes  Fredegar,  "  slew  a  number  of  Frank  merchants  in 
the  kingdom  of  Samo,  and  stripped  them  of  their  goods.  Thus 
began  the  quarrel  between  Dagobert  and  Samo.  Dagobert 
sent  Sicarius  to  this  king  to  ask  for  justice.  Samo  did  not 
wish  to  see  Sicarius,  and  would  not  allow  him  to  enter  his 


SAJl/O,    KING   OF  THE  SLAVS.  29 

presence,  but  he  managed  to  get  to  him  disguised  in  the  dress 
of  a  Slav,  and  delivered  the  message  he  bore  from  Dagobert. 
Samo,  however,  would  repair  none  of  the  wrong  committed, 
and  said  only  that  he  intended  to  have  the  matter  tried,  so 
that  justice  might  be  done  both  in  these  matters  and  in  others 
that  had  arisen  about  the  same  time.  The  enraged  envoy  had 
recourse  to  threats  and  declared  that  Samo  and  his  people 
owed  submission  to  the  king  of  the  Franks.  Samo  replied 
angrily,  '  The  land  we  dwell  in  is  Dagobert's,  and  we  are  his 
men,  but  only  so  long  as  he  lives  in  friendship  with  us.' 
Sicarius  answered,  '  It  is  not  possible  for  the  Christian  servants 
of  God  to  be  the  friends  of  dogs ; '  on  which  Samo  replied, 
'  If  you  are  the  servants  of  God,  we  are  the  dogs  of  God  ;  and 
because  you  continually  go  against  His  will,  we  have  received 
permission  from  Him  to  rend  you  with  our  teeth,'  and  ordered 
Sicarius  to  be  driven  from  his  presence."  Dagobert  declared 
war  on  Samo,  and  made  an  alliance  with  the  Lombards  ;  he 
attacked  the  Chekhs,  whilst  the  Lombards  made  war  on  the 
Slovenes  of  the  Julian  Alps.  Samo  collected  his  forces  at 
Wogastiburg  (doubtless  Tugost  [Taus],  on  the  western  frontier 
of  Bohemia),  and  there  was  fought  a  battle  which  lasted  three 
days,  and  in  which,  as  Fredegar  himself  confesses,  the  Franks 
were  cut  to  pieces.  They  returned  to  their  own  country,  leaving 
behind  them  in  their  flight  even  their  tents  and  baggage. 

This  success  increased  the  fame  of  Samo,  and  a  prince  of 
the  Sorabes,  or  Slavs  of  the  Elbe,  submitted  himself  and  his 
tribe  to  his  rule.  But  Samo  died  in  658,  and  on  his  death 
the  edifice  of  his  power  crumbled  to  pieces ;  the  Slav  chiefs 
would  recognize  no  central  power,  and  anarchy  once  more 
reigned  amongst  them.  Modem  Slav  historians  are  inclined 
to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  mysterious  personage, 
Samo ;  they  wish  to  see  in  him  the  first  representative  of  that 
Slav  unity  which  they  are  only  able  to  guess  at  in  the  past,  or 
dream  of  for  the  future.  But  Samo  possessed  true  political 
genius  and  a  talent  for  organization,  which  appear  to  have 
been  foreign  to  the  race  in  the  earlier  ages  of  its  history,  and 


30  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

which  would  seem  to  prove  thnt  he  was  not  a  Slav.  He  might 
have  played  the  same  part  in  the  history  of  the  Chekhs  and 
the  Slovenes,  as  the  Norman  Varangians  in  that  of  primitive 
Russia. 

The  conquests  of  Samo  had  not,  however,  completely 
destroyed  the  power  of  the  Avars.  Shut  in  by  him  on  the 
west,  they  turned  with  all  the  more  vigour  against  the  Eastern 
empire,  attacked  Constantinople,  ravaged  Dalmatia  and  de- 
stroyed its  towns,  and,  putting  all  the  inhabitants  to  death, 
imagined  themselves  to  be  in  secure  possession  of  their  new 
lands.  Heraclius,  however,  threatened  on  one  side  by  the 
Avars,  on  the  other  by  the  Mussulmans,  determined  to  re- 
people  the  desert  countries  of  the  Adriatic  and  the  Save,  by 
settling  on  them  new  races  who  would  have  to  defend  the 
lands  occupied  by  them,  and  who  would  doubtless  become 
converts  to  the  Christian  faith. 

The  Serviajis  and  Croats  (634-638). 

Which  race  should  be  chosen?  Naturally  he  turned  to 
that  which  had  been  subdued  and  shamefully  ill-treated  by 
the  Avars  ;  and  two  Slav  peoples,  the  Croats  and  the  Servians, 
became  the  instruments  of  the  imperial  policy.  They  had 
settled  themselves  to  the  north  of  the  Carpathian  mountains, 
where  they  were  continually  menaced  by  the  Germans  and 
the  Mongols.  Proposals  were  first  made  to  the  Croats,  and 
one  tribe  answered  to  the  appeal ;  Heraclius  sent  them  to 
attack  Dalmatia.  The  Avars,  taken  by  surprise,  were  every- 
where forced  to  retreat,  and  a  war,  lasting  a  few  years,  ended 
in  the  destruction  of  a  large  part  of  the  Avar  population  and 
the  enslavement  of  the  rest.  Heraclius  then  turned  to  the 
Servians,  and  induced  one  of  the  chiefs  of  that  nation  to  bring 
half  the  tribes  from  the  north  of  the  Danube  to  settle  in  parts 
of  Thessalonica.  Discontented,  however,  with  his  lot,  this 
chief  returned  home  ;  but  the  prospect  of  a  struggle  with  the 
Avars  made  him  wiser  and  less  exacting.  He  implored 
pardon,  and  appealed  to  the  kindness  of  the  emperor,  who 


THE  SERVIANS  AND    THE   CROATS.  3 1 

granted  him  the  deserted  districts  of  Upper  Moesia,  Lower 
Dacia,  and  Dardania. 

Thus  were  established  on  the  ruins  of  the  Avar  race  two 
new  nations,  who  founded  flourishing  states,  which,  in  spite  of 
various  vicissitudes,  have  lasted  to  our  day.  We  have  no 
certain  information  of  the  date  of  this  migration,  but  it  appears 
to  have  taken  place  about  the  year  635  or  638.  The  Chekhs 
maintain  that  the  very  name  of  their  leader  is  known  ;  while 
the  Croats,  quoting  Constantine  Porphyrogenitus,  tell  us  that 
they  were  led  by  five  brothers,  Kluka,  Lobel,  Kosenec,  Muhlo, 
and  Hervat,  and  two  sisters,  Tuga  and  Vuga.  We  mention 
these  names  because  poetry  has  endeared  them  to  a  nation 
whose  present  is  deeply  rooted  in  tlie  past.  In  their  own 
tongue  these  two  races  were  called  Serbi  and  Herv-ati.  The 
land  they  occupied  was  roughly  marked  out  by  the  Adriatic 
to  the  west,  and  by  the  three  rivers,  the  Drin  to  the  south,  the 
Save  to  the  north,  and  the  Morava  to  the  east.  The  frontier 
between  the  Servians  and  Croats  was  uncertain  and  fluctu- 
ating, and  their  language  was  the  same ;  the  small  differences 
which  exist  between  them  at  the  present  day  have  been  pro- 
duced by  historical  events.  To  the  one  race  Christianity 
came  from  Rome,  to  the  other  from  Byzantium  ;  Latin  became 
the  language  of  the  Church  of  the  former,  while  that  of  the 
latter  remained  faithful  to  the  Slav  idiom  ;  and  their  history 
reflects  the  struggle  between  the  two  ecclesiastical  capitals. 

There  had  remained  in  Dalmatia  a  Roman  element  which 
the  Avars  had  not  been  able  completely  to  destroy.  This  disap- 
peared before  the  new  colonists,  and  took  refuge  in  the  islands 
and  a  few  towns  on  the  coast — in  Ragusa  (Rausium) ;  in  Spalato, 
which  had  been  built  on  the  ruins  of  Salona,  destroyed  by  the 
Avars  ;  in  Zara  (Jadera)  and  Trau  (Tragurium).  When  the 
Croats  freed  themselves  from  the  nominal  suzerainty  of  Byzan- 
tium, these  islands  and  towns  still  remained  subject  to  it. 
Down  to  the  present  day,  the  old  Roman  tradition,  kept  alive 
by  Italian  influence,  survives  in  them,  and  from  it  have  arisen 
political  and  literary  conflicts  with  the  Slav  race  of  the  interior. 


32  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  emperor  and  the  pope  lost  no  time  in  converting  the 
new  colonists  to  Christianity,  and  were  able  to  do  so  with 
greater  ease  than  might  have  been  expected.  In  the  space  of 
about  five  and  twenty  years  the  Croats  had  become  Christians, 
and,  if  we  may  believe  Constantine  Porphyrogenitus,  had 
entered  into  a  solemn  engagement,  swearing  by  St.  Peter 
never  to  attack  other  men's  lands,  and  to  live  at  peace  with 
the  peaceful ;  in  return  the  pope  threatened  with  his  curse  all 
who  should  attack  them.  Spalato  was  their  first  metropolis. 
The  Croats  of  the  Save  cannot  have  been  converted  so  early 
as  those  of  Dalmatia;  they  were  still  occupied  with  their 
struggles  against  the  Franks  and  Avars,  and  when  they  accepted 
Christianity  it  came  to  them  from  the  distant  Church  of 
Aquileia. 

The  series  of  Slav  migrations  into  the  lands  now  forming 
the  Austro-Hungarian  state  closes  with  the  arrival  of  the 
Croats  and  Servians.  These  migrations  were  distinguished,  as 
we  have  already  remarked,  by  their  peaceable  character.  The 
Slavs  did  not  rush  down  on  the  cultivated  lands,  attracted  by 
the  riches  of  the  soil,  by  the  thirst  for  conquest,  or  the  mildness 
of  the  climate.  Their  advances  were  made  peaceably,  and 
they  usually  took  possession  of  those  districts  which  had  been 
abandoned  by  their  inhabitants.  Descending  from  their  home 
on  the  further  side  of  the  Carpathians,  from  the  valleys  of  the 
Danube  and  the  Vistula,  they  took  the  place  of  the  Marco- 
manni  in  Bohemia,  of  the  Heruli  and  Gepidae  in  Moravia. 
Sometimes,  like  the  Slovenes,  who  peopled  Carinthia  and 
Carniola,  they  allowed  themselves  to  be  enrolled  in  the  armies 
of  their  conquerors ;  sometimes,  like  the  Servians  and  Croats, 
they  simply  occupied  lands  which  had  been  offered  to  them. 
Nowhere  do  we  find  among  them  the  spirit  of  pillage,  the 
love  of  conquest ;  nowhere,  except  in  the  case  of  Samo,  do  we 
find  any  idea  of  a  powerful  organization  founded  either  on 
unity  of  race  or  on  religious  ideas.  At  the  time  we  have 
now  reached,  that  is  to  say,  about  the  middle  of  the  seventh 
century,  they  possessed  almost  the  whole  of  the  present  Austro- 


MANNERS,    CUSTOMS,    AND  RELIGION.  33 

Hungary — the  valley  of  the  Elbe,  the  central  valley  of  the 
Danube,  and  the  shore  of  the  Adriatic.  These  lands  they  had 
to  defend  against  the  Avars  and  the  Germans,  until  there 
came,  from  the  steppes  of  the  Oural,  that  Magyar  race  which 
was  to  introduce  a  new  element  into  these  regions,  where  it 
was  little  expected.  Unhappily  the  Slavs,  far  from  having 
any  genius  for  war  or  organization,  have  a  natural  antipathy 
to  government.  But  before  entering  on  any  details  of  their 
history,  or  of  their  attempts,  more  or  less  successful,  to  found 
independent  states,  we  must  give  a  brief  account  of  their 
manners  and  customs,  of  their  primitive  constitution,  and  of 
their  religion. 

Manners,  Customs,  and  Religion  of  the  Slavs. 

As  we  have  just  seen,  only  a  very  small  part  of  the  present 
Austrian  dominions  was  at  first  occupied  by  the  Slavs ;  that  is 
to  say,  the  province  of  Galicia,  which  is  now  divided  between 
Russians,  or  Ruthenes,  and  Poles.  The  valleys  of  the  Dnieper 
and  the  Vistula  seem  to  have  been  the  cradle  of  the  race. 
Haifa  century  before  the  Christian  era,  the  geographer  Pom- 
ponius  Mela  observes  that  the  Vistula  was  the  boundary  of 
Sarmatia.  The  name  which  we  now  give  to  the  Slavs  was 
not  originally  borne  by  the  whole  race  ;  it  belonged  only  to  the 
northern  tribes  living  in  the  Russia  of  to-day,  towards  the 
Valdai  plateau.  Those  Slavs  who  lived  near  the  Carpathians 
were  called  Serbs.  The  importance  of  this  name  will  strike 
us  if  we  recall  the  frequent  mention  of  the  Sorabes  in  German 
history ;  it  is  still  borne  by  the  Servians  of  Turkey,  and  by 
their  distant  kinsmen  in  Saxon  and  Prussian  Lusatia.  The 
dialects  spoken  at  Bautzen  and  at  Belgrade  are  so  different, 
that  two  Slavs  from  these  two  towns,  brought  suddenly  face  to 
face,  would  be  unable  to  understand  each  other,  and  yet  both 
call  themselves  Serbi.  History  has  preserved,  more  or  less 
incorrectly,  the  names  of  a  large  number  of  Slav  tribes  whom 
there  is  no  need  here  to  enumerate.  At  the  same  time,  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Germans,  in  the  Latin  chronicles, 

D 


34  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

give  to  the  Slavs  the  name  of  Vends  (Wenden,  Veneti),  and 
that  they  still  use  it  to  describe  the  Slavs  of  certain  districts. 
The  epithet  IVi/idisi:/! ,  ^.dded  to  certain  names  of  places,  recalls 
a  Slav  origin. 

According  both  to  written  documents  and  observations 
which  can  still  be  made  in  certain  districts,  the  government  of 
the  family  among  the  Slavs  was  entirely  patriarchal.  The 
family  lived  in  common  around  its  chief  or  elder  {stareshina). 
The  men  cultivated  the  ground,  the  women  were  occupied 
with  domestic  work.  The  elder  represented  all  tribal  interests, 
offered  sacrifices  to  the  gods,  and  apportioned  to  each  his 
share  of  labour.  The  members  of  the  tribe  all  bore  the  same 
name,  which  was  taken  from  that  of  its  founder.  This  name 
always  ended  in  /V/,  pronounced  itsi  or  itchi.  This  termination 
still  plays  a  great  part  in  the  geographical  names  ;  for  example, 
the  descendants  of  Lobek  were  called  Lobkovici,  whence  the 
name  Lobkowitz,  the  name  of  a  family  well  known  in  Bohemian 
history.  Such  family  names  sometimes  became  those  of  the 
villages  they  inhabited.  When  a  family  grew  too  large,  it  sent 
out  colonies,  who  in  their  turn  took  the  name  of  their  leaders, 
and  founded  new  communities.  The  union  of  a  certain 
number  of  families  constituted  a  tribe.  Most  usually  the  tribe 
took  its  name  from  some  feature  of  the  land  it  lived  in  ;  thus 
the  Poles  were  the  dwellers  on  the  plain  {pole) ;  the  Rietchanes 
were  dwellers  by  the  stream  [reika) ;  the  Drevlianes  the  in- 
habitants of  the  forest  {drevo,  wood).  Occasionally  it  was  taken 
from  some  pursuit  practised  by  the  tribe,  as  the  Roudnici,  the 
miners.  The  common  interests  of  the  tribe  were  discussed  in 
meetings  held  by  the  heads  of  families.  The  chief  filled  all  the 
most  important  offices ;  he  was  priest,  judge,  and  leader  of  the 
armies.  A  few  privileged  chiefs  (Lechs,  Vladyks,  etc.)  formed 
a  kind  of  aristocracy  whose  right  it  is  hard  to  define.  Among 
the  Slavs  the  love  of  liberty  seems  to  have  been  stronger  than 
any  wish  for  law  or  order.  Procopius  says,  "  They  are  not 
governed  by  a  single  man,  but  live  as  a  democracy."  "They 
are  without   government    and    hate   one   another,"   said   the 


LOVE   OF  FREEDOM  AND   EQUALITY.  35 

emperor  Maurice.  The  well-known  saying  of  Tacitus  may  be 
applied  to  them  :  "  I  love  rather  a  dangerous  freedom  than  a 
peaceful  slavery."  How  many  troubles  have  come  upon 
Poland  owing  to  the  custom  of  the  liberum  veto,  that  is,  the 
necessity  that  every  decision  of  the  diets  should  be  taken  on  a 
unanimous  vote,  one  single  opposing  voice  paralyzing  all  legis- 
lation !  Traces  of  this  custom  are  to  be  found  in  other 
Slavonic  peoples. 

Each  tribe  had  a  fortified  enclosure,  which  was  used  as  a 
place  of  shelter,  or  as  the  basis  of  attack  in  time  of  war.  This 
was  called  grad  (the  strong),  and  this  word  is  still  to  be  found 
in  that  of  some  German  towns,  which  were  at  first  Slavonic 
and  were  then  gradually  Germanized,  as  the  town  of  Gratz  in 
Styria.  The  names  of  towns,  rivers,  and  tribes,  and  of  the 
features  of  the  ground  are  almost  identical  in  all  Slavonic  lands, 
however  widely  separated  from  one  another. 

Gradually  these  tribes  were  united,  sometimes  as  a  means 
of  defence,  sometimes  as  the  result  of  intestine  warfare  which 
resulted  in  the  submission  of  the  conquered.  Thus  nations 
were  formed ;  thus  the  Chekhs  took  possession  of  the  whole  of 
Bohemia ;  thus  the  Russians  of  Novgorod  came  at  last  to  give 
their  name  to  an  immense  empire.  With  the  birth  of  nations 
came  that  of  monarchy,  which  ended  by  becoming  the  mono- 
poly of  a  ruling  family  ;  women  even  were  admitted  to  the 
honours  of  royalty  ;  national  dynasties  were  founded.  But  to 
the  Slavs  the  idea  of  equality  was  too  dear  to  allow  monarchical 
institutions  to  develop  easily.  The  members  of  the  royal 
family  obtained  appanages,  in  which  they  tried  to  maintain  a 
position  of  the  greatest  independence ;  hence  the  internal 
wars  of  which  the  history  of  the  early  Slavonic  monarchies  is 
so  full.  The  idea  of  heredity  and  the  right  of  primogeniture 
had  not  yet  appeared. 

As  we  have  already  stated,  the  first  Slavs  were  not  con- 
querors, but  rather  cultivators  of  the  soil.  The  very  nature  of 
the  vast  plains  on  which  they  dwelt  directed  their  efforts  and 
led  them  to  cultivate  corn  and  raise  cattle.     They  seem  to 


S6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

have  had  little  taste  for  life  among  mountains ;  to  have  early 
learnt  the  use  of  agricultural  tools,  such  as  the  plough  and 
spade ;  to  have  kept  bees,  and  to  have  known  how  to  make 
beer  and  hydromel. 

The  comparative  study  of  the  Slav  dialects  enables  us  to 
guess  what  degree  of  perfection  the  domestic  arts  had  reached. 
There  is  no  need  to  prove  that  the  words  which  are  common 
to  these  various  dialects  form  the  basis  of  the  Slav  tongue  as  it 
was  spoken  before  the  separation  of  the  tribes,  that  is  to  say, 
in  pre-historic  times.  They  are  sufficient  to  show  that  the 
Slavs  not  only  cultivated  the  ground,  but  that  they  knew  how 
to  practise,  no  doubt  in  clumsy  fashion,  some  industries  which 
are  unknown  to  those  people  whom  we  call  savages.  They 
were  acquainted  with  iron  and  the  commoner  tools  which  are 
made  of  it ;  with  gold,  silver,  copper,  and  utensils  wrought 
out  of  these  metals  ;  they  knew  how  to  weave  vestments  of 
linen,  and  even  glass  was  to  be  found  among  them.  It  is 
possible  that  some  among  them  were  acquainted  with  a  rude 
kind  of  writing.  "  They  read  and  calculated  with  strokes  and 
notches,"  says  an  ancient  witness.  They  had  no  share,  how- 
ever, in  any  literary  civilization  until  they  came  under  the 
influence  of  Western  Christianity ;  nor  had  they  any  aptitude 
for  trade,  but  willingly  left  it  in  the  hands  of  foreigners ;  and 
this  is  a  noticeable  feature  of  the  race  down  to  the  present 
time. 

They  knew  how  to  make  war,  though  they  cared  little  for 
fighting.  We  have  already  learnt  that  they  built  fortified 
enclosures  to  defend  their  frontiers.  They  knew  how  to  use 
the  sword,  the  lance,  the  bow,  the  helmet,  and  the  shield. 
Amongst  them,  conquering  tribes  were  rare,  and  the  old 
historians  usually  paint  in  favourable  colours  the  manners  of 
these  peaceful  folk.  They  tell  us  that  they  were  kind,  indus- 
trious, hospitable,  chaste,  and  passionately  fond  of  music  and 
song.  Their  women  were  held  in  respect,  and  were  chosen 
sometimes  to  lead  the  family,  the  tribe,  and  even  the  nation. 
Polygamy  was  met  with  occasionally,  but  it  was  the  exception. 


RELIGION  OF  THE  SLAVS.  37 

They  had  laws,  tribunals,  and  trials  by  ordeal ;  at  the  same 
time,  private  revenge,  as  it  exists  nowadays  in  Corsica  and 
Montenegro,  appears  to  have  had,  among  the  early  Slavs,  all 
the  force  of  an  institution  sanctioned  by  custom. 

The  conversion  of  the  Slavs  of  the  present  Austro-Hungary 
to  Christianity,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  was  effected  without  any 
struggle  and  almost  without  any  difficulty.  Nevertheless,  they 
had  a  religious  system  of  their  own  considerably  developed, 
though  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  of  a  kind  to  produce 
fanaticism.  It  readily  made  way  for  Christianity,  directly  the 
new  faith  came  to  them  by  means  of  friendly  apostles  and  not 
through  conquering  missionaries ;  as  we  have  already  seen 
was  the  case  with  the  Croats,  who  were  baptized  as  soon  as 
they  had  taken  possession  of  their  new  country. 

Among  the  Slavs  of  the  Elbe  and  of  Russia,  paganism 
developed  into  a  complicated  system,  but  it  would  take  us  long 
to  learn  all  the  gods  of  their  Pantheon,  and  we  find  hardly  any 
trace  of  these  divinities  among  our  Slavs  of  Bohemia,  Moravia, 
and  Carniola.  Nowhere  would  it  seem  that  they  worshipped 
deified  men,  or  recognized  a  blind  power  in  Fate. 

"The  religion  of  the  ancient  Slavs,"  says  M.  Jirecek,  "was 
a  true  worship  of  Nature.  According  to  them,  the  world  was 
peopled  with  superior  beings,  who  were  good  {bozi')  or  bad 
{biesi).  The  good  were  the  most  powerful,  the  Inesl  could  only 
act  by  their  permission.  Health,  happiness,  and  victory  were 
all  the  work  of  the  good ;  sickness,  wretchedness,  defeat  were 
due  to  the  biesi.  In  the  winter  time,  however,  the  biesi  got  the 
upper  hand.  Sacrifices  and  vows  were  offered  to  the  gods  to 
propitiate  them.  These  beings  formed  a  vast  society  like  that 
of  human  beings ;  they  were  all  the  sons  of  one  greater  than 
them  all.  The  highest  god  was  the  god  of  heaven,  Svarog ;  the 
sun  and  fire  were  his  sons,  and  together  bore  the  father's  name, 
and  were  called  Svarozici.  Among  the  other  gods,  the  more 
important  were  Veles,  god  of  fiocks,  and  Vesna,  called  also 
Siva  or  Lada,  the  goddess  of  spring  and  of  fruitfulness. 
Among  the  biesi  we  must  mention  Morana,  goddess  of  winter 


38  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

and  o  death;  Tras,  demon  of  terror;  and  Stribog,  demon  of 
the  tempest ;  and,  among  inferior  beings,  the  Vilas,  nymphs,  and 
the  Vjedi,  who  dwelt  in  the  air,  and  (he/ezdibaby,  sorcerers  who 
dwelt  on  the  earth,  ought  to  be  mentioned.  The  eclipses  of 
the  sun  and  moon  were  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  the 
Vjedi. 

"  A  belief  in  vampires  was  common  to  all  the  Slavs.  They 
believed  the  soul  to  be  immortal ;  after  having  quitted  the 
body,  she  flew  from  tree  to  tree  until  the  body  had  been 
burned,  and  then  she  went  to  the  Home  of  Shadows,  which 
the  Slavs  called  Nav,  and  which  they  pictured  to  themselves 
as  a  region  of  green  fields  and  groves.  In  Nav  every 
one  occupied  a  position  similar  to  that  which  he  had  held 
during  his  life ;  if  he  died  before  the  other  members  of  his 
family,  he  found  himself  alone  and  deserted.  Hence  arose 
the  custom  of  wives  causing  themselves  to  be  burnt  on  the 
funeral  fires  of  their  husbands.  There  are  also  indications  of 
a  belief  in  a  place  of  sojourn  with  the  biesi,  as  well  as  of  a 
home  with  the  gods." 

Excepting  the  Slavs  of  the  Elbe,  none  of  the  tribes  had 
temples  or  priests.  The  head  of  the  family  or  of  the  tribe,  the 
prince,  offered  the  sacrifices  to  the  gods,  and  these  consisted 
of  animals,  especially  oxen,  which  were  burned ;  the  sacrificial 
fire  was  lighted  on  mountain  tops,  or  other  high  places. 
Forests  were  the  usual  places  of  worship ;  in  them  images  of 
the  gods  were  raised,  and  objects  of  sacrifice  were  placed 
under  the  trees. 

The  great  festivals  of  the  year  were  that  of  the  winter  solstice, 
when  vast  sacrifices  were  offered  to  the  gods  of  earth  and 
water  ;  that  of  the  Renewal,  when  Morana  (Winter)  was  burned 
under  the  form  of  a  manikin,  and  Vesna  (Spring)  was  carried 
in  triumph  ;  and  that  of  the  summer  solstice,  when  sacrifices 
were  off'ered  to  the  sun  and  to  fire.  Besides  these,  there  were 
frequent  festivals  during  the  summer  in  honour  of  the  sun 
and  fire,  and  in  commemoration  of  the  dead. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

MORAVIA    AND    THE    SLAV    APOSTLES. 

The  Chekhs,  Moravians,  and  Carlntliians— Early  Legendary 
History  of  BoJionia. 

The  long  series  of  migrations  which  took  place  on  the  soil  of 
the  future  state  of  Austro-Hungary  does  not  close  with  the 
settlement  of  the  Slavs  in  the  valleys  of  the  Upper  Elbe, 
Middle  Danube,  and  Save.  We  shall  soon  have  to  do  with 
a  new  element,  that  of  the  Magyars,  which  had  so  decisive  a 
part  to  play  in  the  history  of  these  regions.  Then  we  shall  see 
how  the  German  race,  led  by  able  and  fortunate  chiefs,  in 
time  gained  the  ascendency  over  Slavs  and  Magyars  alike. 
At  the  time  of  which  we  are  now  writing  this  German  race 
dwelt  only  in  the  extreme  western  corner  of  these  lands,  and 
had  by  turns  to  struggle  with  the  Slavs  of  Bohemia,  Moravia, 
Carinthia,  and  Istria,  and  the  Avars.  We  shall  return  to  its 
history  when  it  begins  to  play  an  important  part  in  the 
Danubian  territories,  leaving  all  details  of  German  history, 
strictly  so  called,  on  one  side.  The  annals  of  the  Chekhs, 
Moravians,  and  their  Slav  relations,  during  the  two  centuries 
which  passed  between  the  death  of  Samo  and  the  Hungarian 
invasion,  contain  a  certain  number  of  interesting  episodes 
which  are  generally  but  little  known.  These  we  will  briefly 
narrate. 

On  the  death  of  Samo,  the  Slav  empire,  which  he  had  so 
quickly  succeeded  in   founding,  broke   into   three   portions  : 


40  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HVNGARY. 

i.  Bohemia,  whose  geographical  form  evidently  marks  her  out 
for  an  independent  and  homogeneous  state ;  ii.  Moravia, 
including,  besides  the  province  of  that  name,  the  country  now 
inhabited  by  the  Slovaks  and  the  regions  of  the  Middle 
Danube ;  iii.  the  country  of  the  Korutanian  or  Carinthian 
Slavs, — Carinthia,  Carniola,  the  north  of  Styria,  and  some 
parts  of  Lower  Austria  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube. 

The  history  of  these  various  nations  during  the  second  half  of 
the  seventh  and  the  first  half  of  the  eighth  centuries  is  exceed- 
ingly obscure.  The  account  of  the  rise  of  Bohemia  in  the  Latin 
and  Chekh  chronicles  is  fabulous,  and  only  owes  what  reality 
it  possesses  to  that  religious  faith  in  it  which  patriotism  and 
poetry  have  inspired.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  Bohemian 
legends  know  nothing  of  Samo,  who  played  so  great  a  part 
in  the  annals  of  the  country.  The  first  prince  mentioned  by 
them  is  a  certain  Krok,  who  is  said  to  have  reigned  in  the 
second  half  of  the  seventh  century ;  this  mythical  personage 
appears  to  offer  some  analogy  with  the  Krakus  of  the  Poles. 
Krok  had  three  daughters,  who  are  still  dear  to  popular 
memory  :  Kazi,  who  possessed  a  knowledge  of  the  secrets  of 
nature  ;  Teta,  who  was  versed  in  the  sacred  rites  and  things 
religious  ;  and  Libusa  (pronounced  Libusha),  who  on  the  death 
of  her  father  was  chosen  to  rule  his  lands.  Notwithstanding 
that  wisdom  with  which  tradition  endows  her,  she  felt  herself 
too  weak  to  govern  a  turbulent  people  alone,  and  chose  for  her 
husband  the  labourer  Premysl  of  Stadice ;  he  accepted  the 
hand  of  the  princess,  and  repaired  to  the  castle  of  Vysehrad, 
near  Prague,  carrying  with  him  the  rustic  sandals  which  he 
had  worn.  Tradition  still  points  out  the  field  where  this 
Cincinnatus  of  the  Slavs  received  the  invitation  to  leave  his 
plough,  and  at  the  beginning  of  our  century  a  monument  was 
there  raised  to  him.  Premysl  became  the  founder  of  a  royal 
dynasty  which  ruled  over  Bohemia  down  to  the  year  1306. 
The  chroniclers  praise  his  wisdom  and  that  of  his  wife  Libusa. 
To  her  they  attribute  the  founding  of  Prague  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  river  Vltava,  called  the  Moldau  by  the  Germans ;  they 


INTRODUCTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  4 1 

also  tell  us  the  names  of  the  first  successors  of  Premysl,  the 
princes  Nezamysl,  Mnata,  Vojen,  Unislav,  Kresomysl,  Neklan, 
and  Hostivit,  but  they  tell  us  nothing  of  the  events  of  their 
reigns.  The  German  annals  supply  us  with  a  few  facts.  In 
the  year  791  the  Chekhs  allied  themselves  with  Charles  the 
Great  against  the  Avars ;  towards  the  year  806  the  Franks 
invaded  Bohemia  with  three  armies,  and  forced  the  inhabitants 
to  pay  tribute  ;  in  845,  fourteen  Bohemian  nobles  were  bap- 
tized at  Regensburg.  But  Bohemian  history  has  no  real  exist- 
ence before  the  reign  of  Borivoj,  who  was  baptized  towards 
the  end  of  the  ninth  century.  Christianity  entered  Bohemia 
by  way  of  Moravia.  It  may  seem  strange  that  for  three 
centuries  it  had  made  no  progress,  but  the  reason  of  this 
phenomenon  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  Chekhs  had  had  many 
a  struggle  with  the  Germans,  and  would  be  little  inclined  to 
receive  kindly  the  gospel  which  came  to  them  through  the 
hands  of  German  apostles ;  Christianity  meant  nothing  but 
conquest  and  slavery,  when  it  came  to  them  through  such 
missionaries.  On  the  accession  of  Charles  the  Great,  an  alli- 
ance offensive  and  defensive  had  been  entered  into  by  the 
Papacy  and  the  Franks ;  the  Frank  monarch  lent  the  pope  the 
help  of  his  armies,  the  pope  lent  the  monarch  all  the  prestige 
of  his  spiritual  power;  together  they  meant  to  conquer  the 
world,  by  the  sword  and  by  the  cross.  What  wonder  that  the 
sword  roused  hatred  against  the  cross  !  The  example,  also,  of 
the  Saxons,  and  of  the  Slavs  of  the  Elbe,  was  not  likely  to 
encourage  the  Chekhs  to  embrace  the  new  religion.  When, 
however,  it  came  to  them  through  the  Slav  missionaries,  with- 
out any  suspicion  of  conquest,  it  was  easily  able  to  obtain  over 
them  the  salutary  influence  it  had  already  gained  over  the 
races  of  the  west  and  the  south. 

Moravia — Rosiislav  (846) — Cyril  and  MetJwdius  (863-8S5) — 
The  Slav  Church. 

Less  fortunate  than  Bohemia,  her  neighbour  Moravia  has 
not  even  a  legendary  history.     Her  name  appears  for  the  first 


42  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

time  at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century,  under  its  Slav 
form,  Morava  (German  Afan/i,  Moehrefi).  It  is  used  to 
denote  at  the  same  time  a  tributary  of  the  Danube  and  the 
country  it  waters  ;  it  is  met  with  again  in  the  lower  valley  of 
that  stream,  in  Servia,  and  appears  to  have  a  Slav  origin. 
During  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries  there  is  no  doubt 
Moravia  w'as  divided  among  several  princes,  and  had  a  hard 
struggle  against  the  Avars.  The  first  prince  whose  name  is 
known  was  Moimir,  who  ruled  at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth 
century  \  like  the  Chekh  Premysl,  he  gave  his  name  to  a 
dynasty.  During  his  reign  Christianity  made  some  progress  in 
Moravia,  and  Adalram,  archbishop  of  Salzburg,  who  was 
metropolitan  of  Passau,  consecrated  a  church  at  Nitra,  the 
oldest  Christian  church  which  is  heard  of  among  the  Mora- 
vians. Moimir  was  at  war  with  another  Moravian  prince, 
Privina,  who  later  on  obtained  a  fief  on  lake  Balaton  {Blaio, 
mud,  in  Slav,  German  Plattensee)  from  Louis  the  German. 
Privina,  apparently  out  of  hatred  to  Moimir,  showed  great 
sympathy  with  the  Germans  and  their  missionaries,  and  it  is 
known  that  he  became  a  convert  to  Christianity.  He  was 
assassinated  in  860,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Kocel. 
Moimir  tried  to  withstand  the  Germans,  but  was  not  successful ; 
and  in  846  Louis  the  German  invaded  his  country,  deposed 
him,  and  made  his  nephew  Rostislav,  whom  the  chroniclers 
call  Rastiz,  ruler  in  his  stead. 

Christianity  had  penetrated  into  Moravia,  but  it  was  not 
until  it  possessed  a  national  clergy  that  the  new  religion  made 
any  rapid  progress.  The  people,  as  we  have  already  said, 
distrusted  the  German  preachers,  and,  knowing  nothing  of 
Latin,  could  neither  understand  the  German  sermons  nor  the 
Roman  liturgy.  As  late  as  852,  the  Council  of  Mainz  pointed 
out  Moravia  as  a  land  still  knowing  little  of  Christianity : 
rudis  adhuc  christianitatis. 

The  new  prince,  Rostislav,  determined  to  secure  both  the 
political  and  moral  freedom  of  his  country.  He  fortified  his 
frontiers  and  then  declared  war  against  the  emperor.     He  was 


CYRIL  AND  METHODIUS.  43 

victorious,  and  when  once  peace  was  secured  he  undertook  a 
systematic  conversion  of  his  people.  Thus  came  about  one  of 
the  great  episodes  in  the  history  of  the  Slavs  and  their  Church, 
the  mission  of  the  apostles  Cyril  and  Methodius. 

The  Slavs  of  the  Danubian  valley  had  already  come  into 
contact  with  both  the  great  centres  of  Christianity,  Rome  and 
Constantinople;  and  the  great  schism  between  them  had  not  as 
yet  taken  place.  But  Rome,  with  all  her  zeal,  could  only  send 
to  the  Slavs  foreign  missionaries,  who  were  either  ignorant  or 
distrusted  by  the  people ;  Constantinople,  on  the  contrary,  was 
surrounded  by  Slav  Christians,  who  already  possessed  a  native 
clergy.  Rostislav  therefore  sent  to  the  emperor  Michael  III., 
hoping  perhaps  to  find  in  him  an  ally  interested  in  creating  some 
counterpoise  to  the  power  of  the  Germans.  "  Our  people,"  he 
writes  to  the  Byzantine  Caesar,  "  have  renounced  paganism  and 
have  accepted  the  Christian  faith  ;  but  we  have  no  master  who 
can  preach  to  us  the  Christian  truths  in  our  tongue.  Send  us 
one."  At  that  time  there  were  living  at  Constantinople  the 
two  brothers  Constantine,  two  priests  already  celebrated  for 
their  knowledge  and  the  success  of  their  mission  work.  In  the 
Church  they  were  known  by  the  names  of  Cyril  and  Methodius. 
Were  they  Greeks  or  Slavs  ?  No  one  knows.  They  were  born 
in  Thessalonica,  a  city  of  many  languages,  and  their  father 
held  there  an  important  office  in  the  state.  They  had  studied 
science  and  languages,  and  had  distinguished  themselves 
among  the  most  learned  men  of  the  court  of  Byzantium.  The 
one  had  become  a  monk,  the  other  a  priest,  and  their  reputa- 
tion had  been  increased  by  their  missions  to  the  Arabs  and 
the  Khazars.  It  was  during  their  stay  among  the  Khazars 
that  they  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  discover,  at  Kherson, 
the  real  or  reputed  relics  of  the  pope  St.  Clement,  who  had 
suffered  martyrdom  in  these  regions.  Their  success  as  mission- 
aries was  considered  miraculous,  and  languages  of  all  kinds  were 
familiar  to  them.  Cyril  had  been  named  the  Philosopher; 
Methodius  had  refused  an  archbishopric  offered  to  him  by  the 
emperor  and  the  patriarch ;  everything  seemed  to  point  them 


44  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

out  as  fit  for  the  post.  They  accepted  the  honourable  office  of 
apostles  to  the  Moravians ;  and  Cyril  undertook,  before  setting 
out  on  his  mission,  to  create  for  the  Slav  tongue  that  alphabet 
which  it  had  never  yet  possessed  and  to  which  his  name  is  still 
attached  (the  Cyrillic  Alphabet).  He  also  translated  the  New 
Testament  into  Slav,  and  carried  his  translation  with  him  into 
the  country  whither  he  was  called  by  his  apostolic  zeal.  The 
two  brothers  reached  Moravia  at  the  end  of  the  year  863  or 
the  beginning  of  864,  and  were  received  with  great  honour  by 
Rostislav.  They  soon  gathered  round  them  the  young  men 
destined  for  the  priesthood,  to  whom  they  taught  the  new 
alphabet,  while  they  continued  their  translations  of  the  sacred 
books  and  the  liturgy.  "Then,"  says  a  Slav  legend,  "accord- 
ing to  the  word  of  the  prophet,  the  ears  of  the  deaf  heard, 
and  the  tongue  of  the  dumb  was  unloosed." 

The  names  of  the  new  apostles  and  the  news  of  their 
success  soon  reached  the  ears  of  the  pope.  He  summoned 
them  to  Rome,  and  they  responded  to  his  call.  As  they 
crossed  Lower  Pannonia,  they  visited  the  Slav  prince  Kocel, 
who  confided  to  their  care  a  certain  number  of  young  eccle- 
siastics. At  Rome  they  were  received  with  the  highest 
honours ;  pope  Adrian  II.  made  them  bishops,  and  consecrated 
as  priests,  deacons,  or  sub-deacons  several  of  the  disciples 
they  had  brought  with  them,  besides  authorizing  them  to  make 
use  of  the  Slav  liturgy,  and  approving  their  translation  of  the 
Scriptures.  Cyril  died  in  Rome  in  February,  869,  and  was 
buried  there.  Methodius  returned  alone  to  his  work,  the 
pope  assigning  to  him  as  his  diocese  all  the  Slav  countries, 
and  giving  him  letters  for  prince  Rostislav  and  his  neighbours, 
Svatopluk  and  Kocel.  He  approved  of  the  use  of  the  Slav 
liturgy,  but  recommended  that  the  Gospels  should  be  read  in 
Latin,  as  a  sign  of  the  unity  of  the  Church.  On  his  return 
from  Rome  Methodius  again  spent  some  time  at  the  court  of 
Kocel  in  Pannonia. 


TRIALS  OF  METHODIUS.  45 

Svatopluk — Fall  of  Moravia  and  of  the  Slaz'  Clmrch  (870-907). 

When  Methodius  once  more  reached  Moravia,  Rostislav 
was  no  longer  there  to  receive  him.  After  having  struggled 
successfully  for  some  time  against  the  Germans,  he  had  been 
betrayed  by  his  nephew  and  vassal,  Svatopluk,  into  the  hands 
of  Karloman,  duke  of  Carinthia  and  son  of  Louis  the 
German,  who  put  out  his  eyes  and  shut  him  up  in  a  monaster}'. 
Svatopluk  believed  himself  sure  of  the  succession  to  his  uncle 
as  the  price  of  his  treachery,  but  a  very  different  reward  fell  to 
his  lot,  as  Karloman,  trusting  but  little  in  his  fidelity  to  the 
Germans,  threw  him  also  into  captivity. 

The  German  yoke  was,  however,  hateful  to  the  Moravians  ; 
they  soon  rebelled,  and  Karloman  hoped  to  avert  the  danger 
by  releasing  Svatopluk  and  placing  him  at  the  head  of  an 
army.  Svatopluk  marched  against  the  Moravians,  then  sud- 
denly joined  his  forces  to  theirs  and  attacked  the  Germans. 
This  time  the  independence  of  Moravia  was  secured,  and  was 
recognized  by  the  treaty  of  Forcheim  (874). 

The  German  bishops  had  not  seen  without  envy  the  success 
of  Cyril  and  Methodius,  and  the  favours  bestowed  on  them  by 
the  pope.  The  extent  of  their  jurisdiction  and  the  value  of 
their  tithes  had  been  considerably  lessened  by  the  creation  of 
the  new  Slav  diocese.  They  looked  upon  Methodius  as  a 
usurper,  and  as  such  cited  him  before  them  and  imprisoned 
him  in  a  convent,  where  they  kept  him  for  two  years.  From 
this  time  the  life  of  Methodius  was  one  long  struggle  against 
the  German  clergy.  They  constantly  intrigued  against  him, 
and  endeavoured  to  withdraw  from  him  the  favour  of  the 
pontiff.  He  nevertheless  persisted  in  his  work,  and  about 
874  baptized  the  prince  of  Bohemia,  Borivoj,  and  by  his 
means  introduced  the  Slav  liturgy  into  Bohemia.  Accusations 
against  him  continually  reached  the  pope  ;  now  he  was  accused 
of  heresy,  now  he  was  denounced  for  his  use  of  the  Slav 
liturgy ;  and  he  was  but  ill  supported  by  Svatopluk.  He  was 
obliged  once  more  to  go  to  Rome  to  defend  himself,  but  came 


46  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

out  victorious  from  the  trial,  pope  John  VIII.  recognizing 
his  orthodoxy,  and  once  more  confirming  the  privileges 
granted  to  the  Slav  liturgy.  It  would  take  us  too  long  to 
relate  here  how  the  enemies  of  Methodius  substituted  false 
documents  for  those  which  had  been  drawn  up  by  the  pope 
himself.  Methodius  was  again  obliged  to  appeal  to  the 
pontiff,  who  sanctioned  his  action  in  a  letter  which  was 
publicly  read  to  the  assembled  people.  He  passed  the  last 
years  of  his  troubled  life  in  completing  his  translation  of  the 
sacred  books,  and  died  on  April  6,  885.  On  his  death  his 
disciples  had  no  protection  from  the  persecutions  of  their 
enemies,  and  were  forced  to  seek  refuge  among  the  Bulgarians, 
by  whom  they  were  eagerly  welcomed, 

The  departure  of  the  disciples  of  Methodius  completely 
disorganized  the  Slav  Church.  The  German  bishops  of  the 
neighbouring  dioceses  of  Salzburg,  Freisingen,  Eichsstadt, 
Ratisbon,  and  Passau  drew  up  and  sent  to  the  pope, 
John  IX.  (900),  a.  factum  in  which  they  claimed  for  themselves 
jurisdiction  over  the  country  of  the  Moravians,  "  a  country," 
said  they,  "which  has  been  subject  to  our  kings  and  our  people 
both  as  regards  Christian  worship  and  the  payment  of  tribute. 
.  .  .  With  their  will  or  against  their  will,"  adds  this  apostolic 
factum,  "they  shall  be  subject  to  us  : "  sive  velint  swe  nolint^ 
regno  nostra  subacti  eniiit.  These  controversies,  which  were  so 
little  animated  by  the  spirit  of  that  religion  which  was  their 
object,  were  put  an  end  to  in  a  most  unexpected  and  bloody 
fashion  by  the  invasion  of  the  Magyars.  Moravia  was  thrown 
into  a  state  of  anarchy,  and  the  Slav  liturgy  perished.  But 
few  traces  of  it  can  be  discovered  in  the  history  of  those  lands 
which  gave  it  birth.  Proscribed  in  Moravia,  it  flourished  for 
a  time  in  Bulgaria  ;  from  thence  it  passed  to  the  Servians, 
Russians,  and  to  the  Croats,  among  whom  it  had  a  long  battle 
to  fight  against  the  Roman  clergy ;  then  it  gradually  dis- 
appeared. 

At  the  present  time,  throughout  the  empire  of  Austria, 
Latin   is   the   language   of  the  Catholic  Church.     The   Slav 


SVAJOPLUK.  47 

liturgy  is  used  only  by  about  three  millions  of  Uniate 
Ruthenians  in  Galicia,  and  three  millions  of  Servians  and 
Roumanians,  but  none  of  these  have  directly  inherited  the 
work  of  Cyril  and  Methodius.  It  has  come  to  them  through 
Bulgaria  and  Servia,  but  their  alphabet  is  still  called  the 
Cyrillic  Alphabet,  and  preserves  the  memory  of  its  great  in- 
ventor. On  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic,  in  the  present  diocese 
of  Veglia,  Zara,  Spalato,  and  Sebenico,  about  twenty-four  thou- 
sand Catholics  still  make  use  of  the  Slav  liturgy  ;  but  they  use 
another  alphabet,  which  is  called  the  Glagolica.  This  is  no 
place  in  which  to  discuss  the  various  questions  attached  to  the 
history  of  these  two  alphabets.  Though  they  have  returned 
more  or  less  willingly  to  the  use  of  the  Latin  liturgy,  the  Slavs 
of  the  Western  Rite  have  by  no  means  forgotten  the  great 
apostles  of  their  race  ;  their  millennium  was  celebrated  in  1863 
with  imposing  solemnity,  and  they  are  still  considered  the 
representatives  of  that  literary  and  religious  unity  which  is  the 
dream  of  certain  patriots  for  the  future.  Cynl  and  Methodius 
deserve  a  far  higher  place  in  religious  history  than  has  hitherto 
been  assigned  to  them.  Their  knowledge,  their  zeal  for  the 
Gospel,  their  indomitable  perseverance,  have  nothing  to  fear 
from  comparison  with  the  apostles  of  Germany. 

But  we  must  return  to  Svatopluk  and  his  ephemeral 
empire.  The  treaty  of  Forcheim  secured  the  independence 
of  Moravia ;  thenceforward  peace  reigned  between  Svatopluk 
and  Louis  the  German.  Complete  master  of  his  country, 
strong  in  the  power  of  his  army  and  of  his  Slav-speaking 
clergy,  Svatopluk  might  have  put  himself  forward  as  the 
representative  and  defender  of  the  Slavs  against  the  Germans. 
But  this  was  a  part  he  only  half  understood.  He  had  sym- 
pathies for  the  foreigners  which  were  to  prove  fatal  both  to 
himself  and  his  people ;  he  invited  them  to  his  court,  and, 
whilst  helping  to  spread  the  use  of  the  Slav  liturgy  in  his 
provinces,  he  himself  made  use  of  the  Roman  liturgy,  and  thus 
opened  the  door  to  the  pretensions  of  the  German  clergy. 
He  began  his  reign  with  a  crime,  he  ended  it  with  blunders ; 


48  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

he  possessed  great  talents,  but  his  character  was  not  equal  to 
them,  and  his  policy  appears  to  have  been  fortunate  rather 
than  able.  At  one  time  he  was  the  most  powerful  monarch 
of  the  Slavs ;  Rome  was  in  treaty  with  him,  Bohemia  gravi- 
tated towards  the  orbit  of  Moravia,  while  Moravia  held  the 
empire  in  check.  In  883,  he  took  advantage  of  the  struggle 
which  was  going  on  for  the  possession  of  the  Ostmark,  which 
adjoined  his  own  territories,  to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of 
Germany.  Arnulf,  duke  of  Pannonia,  took  the  other  side, 
and  war  broke  out  between  these  two  neighbours,  both  of 
whom  were  brave,  powerful,  and  ambitious.  Twice  did 
Svatopluk  ravage  the  country  of  Upper  Pannonia  without 
meeting  with  any  resistance.  According  to  the  chronicle,  so 
numerous  was  his  army  that  from  the  rising  to  the  setting  of 
the  sun  it  ceased  not  to  march  by.  Charles  the  Fat  himself 
came  to  the  Ostmark  to  try  to  put  an  end  to  the  struggle,  and 
there  received  in  884  a  visit  from  Svatopluk,  who  promised 
to  respect  the  lands  of  the  empire  ;  and  in  888  Svatopluk 
concluded  a  treaty  of  friendship  and  alliance  with  Arnulf, 
which  was  renewed  in  891.  At  this  time  the  kingdom  of 
Svatopluk  was  a  powerful  state  ;  it  included,  besides  Moravia 
and  the  present  Austrian  Silesia,  the  subject  country  of 
Bohemia,  the  Slav  tribes  on  the  Elbe  and  the  Vistula  as  far 
as  the  neighbourhood  of  Magdeburg,  part  of  Western  Galicia, 
the  country  of  the  Slovaks,  and  Lower  Pannonia.  But  two 
such  ambitious  men  could  not  trust  each  other ;  their  friend- 
ship was  only  based  on  natural  fear ;  and  as  soon  as  Arnulf 
believed  that  he  had  secured  sufficiently  strong  allies  he  once 
more  attacked  Svatopluk.  He  entered  into  an  alliance  with 
Braclav,  a  Slovene  prince,  sought  the  aid  of  the  king  of  the 
Bulgarians,  and,  what  was  of  far  graver  importance,  sum- 
moned to  his  help  the  Magyars,  who  had  just  settled  them- 
selves on  the  Lower  Danube.  Swabians,  Bavarians,  Franks, 
Magyars,  and  Slovenes  rushed  simultaneously  upon  Moravia. 
Overwhelmed  by  numbers,  Svatopluk  made  no  attempt  at 
resistance;  he  shut  up  his  troops  in  fortresses,  and  abandoned 


DEATH  OF  SVATOPLUK.  49 

the  open  country  to  the  enemy,  who  ravaged  it  for  four  whole 
weeks.  Then  hostihties  ceased ;  but  no  durable  peace  could 
exist  between  the  two  adversaries.  War  began  again  in  the 
following  year,  when  death  freed  Arnulf  from  Svatopluk.  The 
populace,  which  loves  to  surround  its  great  men  with  legendary 
glory,  would  not  believe  that  Svatopluk  had  died  like  any 
ordinary  mortal.  From  the  tenth  century  onwards  a  marvel- 
lous story  has  been  told  of  him.  One  night  the  great  Moravian 
chief  left  his  camp  unobserved,  mounted  his  faithful  steed, 
and  gained  the  wooded  sides  of  Mount  Zobor,  near  Nitra, 
where  was  a  well-known  hermitage.  Here  he  slew  his  horse, 
buried  his  sword  in  the  earth,  and  presented  himself  before 
the  hermits  of  the  mountain;  he  became  a  monk,  and  lived 
long  without  making  known  his  rank,  which  he  only  revealed 
at  the  moment  of  death.  Through  many  vicissitudes  his 
name  remained  popular  in  Moravia,  and  to  this  day  the  people 
make  use  of  a  proverb,  "  Seek  for  Svatopluk,"  when  they  wish 
to  imply,  "  Seek  for  justice."  We  have  criticised  this  prince 
severely,  but  we  must  not  forget  that  almost  all  we  know  of 
him  has  reached  us  through  his  enemies.  "He  was  a  vessel 
of  treachery,"  say  the  annals  of  Fulda  ;  "  he  overturned  the 
countries  with  his  greed,  and  thirsted  for  human  blood." 
"  He  was  a  man  of  great  genius  and  great  cleverness,"  writes 
Regino.  "  He  was  valiant  and  strong,  and  dreaded  by  his 
neighbours,"  says  Constantine  Porphyrogenitus.  Modern 
Slavonic  historians  give  him  a  high  place  in  the  history  of 
the  race,  and  look  upon  him  as  the  successor  of  Samo,  and 
the  second  founder  of  Slavonic  unity  in  the  West. 

At  his  death  he  left  three  sons ;  he  chose  the  eldest, 
Moimir  II.,  as  his  heir,  and  assigned  appanages  to  each  of 
the  others.  On  his  death-bed  he  begged  them  to  live  at 
peace  with  one  another,  but  his  advice  was  not  followed. 
The  Moravian  kingdom  was  far  from  forming  a  homogeneous 
whole.  Bohemia  soon  threw  off  those  bonds  which  had  attached 
her  as  a  vassal  to  Svatopluk  ;  the  Magyars  invaded  Moravian 
Pannonia,  and  forced  Moimir    into   an    alliance  with    them. 

E 


50  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Arnulf  fomented  the  discord  between  Moimir  II.  and  Svato- 
pluk  II.  ;  and  in  the  year  goo  the  Bavarians,  together  with  the 
Chekhs,  invaded  Moravia.  In  903  the  name  of  Moimir 
disappears.  As  to  the  cause  of  his  death,  as  to  how  it  was 
that  suddenly  and  for  ever  the  kingdom  of  Moravia  was 
destroyed,  the  chronicles  tell  us  nothing.  Cosmas  of  Prague 
shows  us  Moravia  at  the  mercy  of  Germans,  Chekhs,  and 
Hungarians ;  then  history  is  silent,  towns  and  castles  crumble 
to  pieces,  churches  are  overthrown,  the  people  are  scattered. 
"  A  mournful  silence  reigns  over  the  universal  desolation," 
says  the  Chekh  historian  Palacky,  "  and  we  know  not  when 
or  how  this  work  of  horror  was  accomplished."  The  brief 
duration  of  the  Moravian  kingdom  has  been  justly  compared 
to  that  of  the  mounds  of  sand  which  are  raised  by  the  breath 
of  the  tempest,  and  by  the  tempest  dispersed.  This  monarchy 
of  a  day  has  not  even  left  ruins  behind  it ;  we  hardly  know 
the  site  of  that  capital  of  Svatopluk,  that  marvellous  city  of 
Velehrad  (ineffabilis  fuuniHo),  where  Methodius  baptized  the 
prince  of  Bohemia.  The  poetry  of  the  people  alone  still 
bewails  the  memory  of  a  vanished  world :  "  Hard  by  the 
wide  Danube,  hard  by  the  foaming  waves  of  the  Morava,  ... 
bleeds  the  wounded  heart  of  the  Slavs.  O  Fatherland  of  our 
noble  forefathers  !  theatre  which  echoes  to  our  ancient 
struggles  !  thou  liest  in  thy  vast  extent  entombed  ;  the  arrow 
of  misfortune  has  pierced  thy  breast.  Thy  time  has  gone  by ; 
thy  glory  sleeps  an  eternal  sleep.  Thy  sons  now  find  but  the 
shadow  of  the  glory  of  their  forefathers. 

"  The  sword  of  Moimir  slumbers,  the  helmet  of  Svatopluk 
lies  buried  beneath  ruins.  Only  at  times  from  the  bosom  of 
forgetfulness  a  memory  flies  to  heaven  in  a  song. 

"  Nitra,  dear  Nitra  !  great  Nitra  !  where  are  the  times  of  thy 
glory  ?  Nitra,  dear  Nitra  !  thou  mother  of  the  Slavs,  when  I  think 
of  thee,  needs  must  I  weep.  Once  thou  wast  the  mother  of  all 
the  Danube,  the  Vistula,  the  Morava.  Thou  wast  the  throne 
of  Svatopluk,  when  his  powerful  hand  ruled  ;  thou  wast  the 
holy  city  of  Methodius,  when  he  taught  our  fathers  the  Word 


FALL   OF  THE  MORA  VIAN  KINGDOM.  5  i 

of  God.     Now  is  thy  glory  veiled  by  the  shadows.     Thus  do 
times  change  !  thus  passes  away  the  world  !  " 

The  Slovcjics —  The  Croats  under  a  National  Dynasty 
{780-1090). 

The  Slovenes,  or  Korutanian  Slavs  {i.e.  of  Carinthia  and  Car- 
niola),  were  of  but  small  importance  during  the  times  of  which 
we  have  been  writing.  After  the  death  of  Samo  they  separated 
from  the  Chekhs,  but  were  able  to  form  neither  a  nation  nor  a 
state.  During  the  seventh  century,  when  they  were  divided 
into  several  principalities,  they  had  many  struggles  with  the 
Friulans,  the  Bavarians,  and  the  Avars.  Borut,  their  first 
prince  whose  name  is  known,  sought  the  aid  of  Pepin  the 
Short  against  the  Avars  (748),  and  obtained  it  at  the  price  of 
almost  complete  submission  to  the  Frank  monarch.  His 
successor,  Karat,  was  obliged  to  renew  this  bond  of  vassalage. 
Chotimir,  who  was  a  cousin  of  Borut,  was  brought  up  in 
Bavaria,  and  was  a  Christian ;  he  was  a  fervent  apostle  of  the 
Gospel  among  the  Slovenes.  With  the  help  of  Virgil,  bishop 
of  Salzburg,  he  worked  hard  at  the  conversion  of  his  people, 
but  he  did  not  obtain  his  object  without  meeting  with  some 
resistance.  Their  conversion  was  due  solely  to  the  efforts  of 
the  German  clergy,  and  its  first  result  was  the  complete 
Germanizing  of  the  Slavs  of  Salzburg  and  the  Tyrol,  ^^'e  are 
told  of  a  pagan  chief,  named  Droh,  who  rose  against  a  prince 
Valduch.  Valduch  sought  the  protection  of  Tassillo,  duke  of 
Bavaria,  and  was  stripped  of  his  lands  by  Charles  the  Great, 
who  divided  the  Slovene  country  between  the  duke  of  Bavaria 
and  the  duke  of  Friuli.  Later  on,  Arnulf,  when  he  was  kino- 
of  the  Romans,  confided  a  portion  of  Pannonia  to  a  native 
prince,  named  Braclav.  The  history  of  these  Slavs  belongs  in 
the  main  to  that  of  the  Ostmark  and  the  empire.  One  thing 
only  deserves  to  be  recorded  here,  and  that  is  the  curious 
mode  in  which  Korutanian  Slavs  (or  Carinthians)  installed 
their  princes.  The  ceremony  took  place  near  the  town  of 
Celovec   (Klagenfurt).      A   peasant   mounted   on   a   rock   to 


52  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

await  the  coming  of  the  new  prince,  who  advanced  clothed  in 
rustic  garments.  The  peasant  asked,  "  Who  is  this  who 
approaches?"  the  people  answered,  "It  is  the  prince  of  this 
land."  The  peasant  then  asked,  "  Is  he  a  good  judge  ?  is  he 
the  friend  of  truth  ?  "  and,  on  receiving  a  reply  in  the  affirma- 
tive, the  peasant  yielded  his  place  to  the  new-comer,  who 
mounted  the  rock  and,  brandishing  his  sword,  swore  to 
defend  the  country  of  the  Slovenes.  This  custom  lasted  down 
to  the  fifteenth  century.  The  people  who  had  imagined  it 
deserved  a  more  brilliant  destiny. 

The  historical  individuality  of  the  Croats  is  much  more 
clearly  marked  than  that  of  the  Slovenes.  We  have  already 
seen  how,  on  their  arrival  in  their  new  country,  they  adopted 
Christianity  without  difficulty.  It  came  to  them  from  the  sees 
of  Aquileia  and  Salona,  and  was  accepted  by  the  populace  at 
once.  The  Germans  could  invoke  no  pretence  of  conversion 
to  justify  their  attempts  at  conquest  among  the  Croats,  but  it 
was  sufficient  warranty  for  German  ambition  that  the  Croats 
formed  a  boundary  to  the  empire.  In  796,  Charles  the  Great 
overthrew  the  Avars  by  the  capture  of  their  fortified  camp, 
and  after  the  year  822,  we  no  longer  meet  with  their  name  in 
the  chronicles  ;  it  still  remains  in  the  Slav  tongue  (under  the 
form  of  Obr)  as  a  synonym  for  giant.  A  Russian  phrase,  which 
is  quoted  with  enjoyment  by  the  monk  Nestor,  says,  "  disap- 
peared like  the  Obrs  ;  "  that  is,  gone,  leaving  no  trace  behind. 
When  Charles  the  Great  was  once  master  of  the  country 
between  the  Danube  and  the  Theiss,  his  dominions  enclosed 
the  Croat  country,  although  they  were  still  independent. 
The  margrave  of  Friuli  was  appointed  to  attack  their  coast, 
and  the  Croats  of  Dalmatia  and  Slavonia  passed  from  the 
yoke  of  Byzantium  to  that  of  the  West.  The  Franks  spread 
over  the  country  ;  Frankochorion  is  known  to  have  been  the 
name  given  by  the  Byzantines  to  Sirmia,  and  we  meet  with  it 
to-day  under  the  form  of  Fronchka  (Fronchka)  Gora,  or  the 
Mountain  of  the  Franks,  in  Slavonia. 

The  civilization  of  the  Croats  was  modelled  on  that  of  the 


CROATIA   INDEPENDENT.  53 

Latin  races,  and,  notwithstanding  their  early  connection  with 
Byzantium,  they  retained  no  trace  of  Hellenism.  They  did 
not,  however,  willingly  accept  the  Prankish  rule.  Their  chief 
Ljudevit  (823)  revolted  against  the  foreign  yoke,  but  was 
defeated  and  forced  to  fly  to  Servia,  where  he  was  assassinated. 
We  cannot  undertake  to  explain  the  tangled  history  of  the 
Croats  of  Dalmatia  and  the  Save  districts ;  after  being  some- 
times divided  and  sometimes  united,  they  were  finally  united 
towards  the  end  of  the  ninth  century.  At  this  time  the  great 
zhupan  Mutimir  proclaimed  himself  chief  of  the  Croats  by  the 
grace  of  God  {divino  nmnere  Jtivatus  Croatoriim  dux)  (892-900), 
and  organized  his  court  on  the  model  of  the  other  European 
courts.  Tomislav  (914-940)  took  the  title  of  king,  and  hence- 
forward the  Croats  of  Dalmatia  and  those  of  the  Save  shared 
the  same  destinies.  The  Byzantine  emperor,  Constantine,  was 
unable  to  prevent  the  independence  of  Tomislav,  and  granted 
him  the  title  of  consul  for  Dalmatia.  During  his  reign,  the 
Council  of  Spalato  was  held,  at  which  the  use  of  the  Slav 
liturgy  was  forbidden  and  Croatia  was  declared  to  be  eccle- 
siastically subject  to  the  archbishop  of  Spalato. 

In  Croatia,  as  in  Moravia,  Western  influences  had  banished 
the  Slav  liturgy,  and  the  Croats  found  themselves  more  and 
more  separated  from  the  Servians,  while  the  introduction  of 
the  Latin  language  prepared  the  way  for  the  Venetians,  who 
gradually  took  possession  of  the  whole  coast  of  the  Adriatic. 
Drzislav  (970-1001)  obliged  the  court  of  Byzantium  to  recog- 
nize his  title  of  king,  and  an  agent  {protospathare)  established 
at  Zara  was  the  only  representative  of  Byzantine  overlordship. 
But  Drzislav  was  less  fortunate  against  the  Venetians,  who, 
under  the  doge  Peter  Urseolus  IL,  conquered  the  towns  of  the 
coast,  Zara,  Trogir  (Trau),  Spalato,  etc.  The  Venetian  doges 
took  the  title  of  dukes  of  Dalmatia.  King  Kresimir  IIL  tried 
in  vain  to  recover  the  lost  towns  (1018);  King  Stephen  L 
lived  in  friendly  relations  with  Venice,  and  even  married  the 
daughter  of  the  doge.  His  son  Peter  Kresimir,  called  the 
Great,  recovered  the  Dalmatian  cities  and  the  Isles,  and  took 


54  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  title  of  king  of  Dalmatia ;  conquered  from  the  Bulgarians 
the  district  of  Sirmia  which  they  had  captured,  and  from  the 
Servians  part  of  Bosnia  ;  he  also  seized  part  of  Carniola,  Styria, 
and  Istria. 

During  his  reign,  another  council  was  held  at  Spalato  to 
combat  the  Slav  liturgy,  which  still  enjoyed  the  popular  favour 
in  spite  of  all  the  anathemas  hurled  against  it,  and  Kresimir 
supported  pope  Nicholas  II.  in  his  measures  for  driving  the 
national  tongue  out  of  the  Church.  Persecuted  as  the  means 
of  teaching  heresy,  it  took  refuge  in  a  few  isles  of  the  Adriatic, 
where  it  has  lasted  down  to  our  time. 

King  Svinimir,  or  Zvonimir  (1075),  is  known  best  from  his 
relations  with  pope  Gregory  VII.  That  pontiff,  who  was 
carrying  on  an  energetic  struggle  with  the  empire,  aimed  at 
directly  attaching  to  the  Holy  See  those  secondary  states  who 
were  dependants  neither  of  Germany  nor  Byzantium.  He  sent 
cardinal  Gebizon  to  Croatia,  bearing  royal  insignia  to  Zvonimir. 
On  the  9th  of  October,  1076,  Zvonimir  was  consecrated  in  the 
basilica  of  St.  Peter  in  Spalato,  in  the  name  of  the  pope,  and 
received  from  the  hands  of  his  envoy  the  royal  diadem,  sword, 
and  sceptre.  In  return  for  this  honour,  he  promised  to  remain 
faithful  and  obedient  to  the  Holy  See,  to  cause  tithes  to  be 
paid,  to  oblige  the  clergy  to  live  decent  lives,  and  to  prevent 
all  marriages  forbidden  by  the  laws  of  the  church,  and  all 
traffic  in  slaves.  He  also  undertook  to  pay  two  hundred 
ducats  yearly  to  the  pope.  The  chronicles  of  Croatia  look 
upon  the  reign  of  Zvonimir  as  the  climax  of  the  national 
power  :  "  Under  good  king  Zvonimir  the  country  lived  in  joy, 
the  cities  were  full  of  gold  and  of  silver.  The  poor  man  had 
no  fear  that  the  rich  would  do  him  wrong ;  the  servant 
dreaded  no  wrong-doing  from  his  master.  The  king  defended 
them,  and  they  had  nought  to  fear  but  the  anger  of  God." 
Zvonimir  died  without  children,  and  the  nobles  of  Croatia  and 
Dalmatia  elected  one  of  his  relations,  Stephen  II.,  who  reigned 
but  a  short  time,  and  was  the  last  king  of  the  line  of  the 
Derzislavic.     On  his  death,  the  Croats,  after  long  discussion, 


KING  ZVONIMIR.  55 

offered  their  crown  to  Ladislas,  king  of  Hungary,  who  accepted 
it.  Later  on,  we  shall  see  how  and  under  what  conditions  the 
union  of  Croatia  and  Hungary  was  brought  about.  We  will 
sum  up  in  a  very  few  words  what  is  known  of  the  organization 
of  the  kingdom  of  Croatia,  and  of  its  constitution  during  the 
period  of  its  independence. 

The  Croats  were  grouped  together  in  families  in  the  same 
way  as  the  other  Slav  races  already  described.  A  certain 
number  of  families  made  up  a  zhupa  {znpa),  at  the  head  of 
which  was  a  zhupan.  In  early  times,  one  amongst  the  zhupans 
was  recognized  as  the  head  of  the  nation,  with  the  title  of  the 
great  zhupan  ;  he  had  no  absolute  authority,  but  took  counsel 
with  his  colleagues.  These  zhupans,  who  are  named  in  the 
Latin  texts  zuppani,  were  called  by  foreigners  duces,  co mites, 
and  principes. 

Around  the  great  zhupan,  or  king,  gathered  a  nobihty  of 
counts  and  barons.  The  powers  of  the  great  zhupan  do  not 
seem  ro  have  differed  from  those  exercised  later  on  by  the 
kings ;  this  supreme  authority,  moreover,  was  hereditary.  At 
the  same  time  we  find  that  when  there  was  no  lawful  heir, 
the  people  exercised  the  right  of  election  :  it  was  thus  that  the 
ban  Zvonimir  was  elected  concordi  totius  cleri  et populi  electione. 
Legislative,  administrative,  and  judicial  functions  were 
exercised  by  the  king  with  the  aid  of  a  national  assembly. 
The  capital  was  Belgrade,  in  Dalmatia.  The  court  included 
a  number  of  dignitaries,  similar  to  those  found  in  western 
kingdoms  :  the  zhupan  of  the  palace,  called  also  comes  curialis 
and  comes  curiae  regiae,  the  curiae  regiae  judex,  the  aulae  regiae 
cdncellarius,  the  cubicularius  or  chamberlain,  the  butler,  the 
pantler,  the  master  of  the  horse,  etc. 

After  the  king,  the  most  important  officers  of  the  State 
were  the  bans.  At  first  there  was  but  one  ban,  who  was  a 
kind  of  lieutenant-general ;  but  later  on  there  were  seven  of 
them,  eacli  known  by  the  name  of  the  province  he  governed, 
as  the  ban  of  Sirmia,  ban  of  Dalmatia,  etc.  To  this  day  the 
royal   lieutenant   of  Croatia  (or    "governor-general,"   if  that 


56  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

title  be  preferred)  is  called  the  ban.  Below  the  bans  came  the 
zkupans,  the  nndcx-zhupans,  and  the  centeniers,  or  hundred-men. 
All  grave  questions  of  legislation,  of  peace  and  war,  and  of 
election  to  the  throne  were  treated  in  the  diets,  whose 
organization  is  but  ill  defined.  The  towns  on  the  Dalmatian 
coast  had  preserved  municipal  institutions  of  Roman  origin, 
which  were  independent  of  the  rest  of  the  kingdom. 

According  to  Constantine  Porphyrogenitus,  under  the 
great  zhupan  Trpimir  the  Croatian  army  already  numbered 
100,000  foot  soldiers  and  60,000  horsemen ;  the  fleet  was 
composed  of  140  vessels,  manned  by  5000  sailors. 

At  the  head  of  the  Church  was  the  archbishop  of 
Spalato,  which  was  the  metropolis  of  the  Dalmatian  bishoprics. 
The  bishopric  of  Nin  was  the  metropolis  of  the  rest  of  the 
kingdom.  Byzantine  orthodoxy  made  but  little  progress  in 
Croatia,  and  we  have  already  seen  with  what  distrust  the 
Roman  clergy  and  the  Holy  See  treated  the  Slav  liturgy,  even 
though  it  was  Catholic.  The  court  of  Rome  remained  all- 
powerful  in  Croatia ;  the  Church  was  rich,  and  the  monasteries, 
especially  those  of  the  Benedictines,  very  numerous.  The 
Latin  language,  owing  to  the  influence  of  Rome,  became  the 
official  language  of  politics,  literature,  and  religion.  At  the 
same  time,  there  remain  some  manuscripts  which  prove  that 
the  national  tongue  was  occasionally  used  in  legal  proceedings. 


CHAPTER  V. 

FORMATION    OF   THE    MAGYAR   STATE  (892-IO38). 

The  Magyars — Their  Origin — Their  Arrival  in  the  Valley  of 
the  Danube — Their  Invasions  (892-955). 

We  have  already  spoken  more  than  once  of  the  Magyars. 
This  nation  appears  in  history  under  a  double  name — that  of 
Magyars,  the  name  they  use  themselves,  and  that  of  Hun- 
garians, the  one  used  by  foreigners.  The  first  time  we  hear 
of  them,  they  are  spoken  of  as  living  by  the  chase  near  the 
Ural  Mountains  and  the  river  Volga.  These  nomadic  tribes, 
wandering  over  the  immense  plains  of  Eastern  Russia, 
gradually  made  their  way  westward,  and  settled  first  not  far 
from  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea.  There  seven  tribes  are  said 
to  have  given  the  chief  command  to  a  young  leader  named 
Arpad,  who  became  the  founder  of  a  dynasty.  Evidently 
the  wealth  of  Europe  attracted  these  wanderers,  as  Italy  had 
formerly  attracted  the  German  race  ;  and  the  imprudence  of 
the  Western  monarchs  prepared  an  easy  path  for  them  to  the 
very  heart  of  its  fertile  lands.  First,  the  Eastern  emperor 
implored  their  help  against  the  Bulgarians,  and  then  ArnuU" 
sought  their  aid  against  Svatopluk. 

The  districts  in  which  they  now  found  themselves  had 
been  ravaged  and  occupied  by  their  ancestors  or  their  kinsmen 
for  more  than  two  centuries.  The  Huns  of  Attila  had  en- 
camped there,  and  they  had  been  followed  by  the  Avars,  who 
had  settled  there  from  the  end  of  the  sixth  century,  down  to 


58  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  time  when  Charles  the  Great  destroyed  their  great  hring 
between  the  Danube  and  the  Tisza  (Theiss)  (796). 

The  first  attack  of  the  Magyars,  which  was  directed  against 
Moravia  in  892,  met  with  but  Httle  success.  Two  years 
later,  they  returned,  determined  this  time  to  settle  in  whatever 
part  of  the  land  they  might  be  able  to  conquer.  Few  examples 
of  a  migration  so  vast  are  to  be  found  in  the  history  of 
barbarian  invasions.  Two  hundred  and  sixteen  thousand  men 
able  to  bear  arms,  which  implies  a  total  population  of  almost 
a  million,  are  the  numbers  mentioned  in  the  national  traditions, 
where  it  is  said  that  this  multitude  took  nearly  three  years  to 
cross  the  Carpathians.  We  need  feel  no  astonishment  either 
at  the  number  of  this  host,  when  we  remember  the  frequent 
migrations  of  vast  hordes  in  the  Ural-Altaic  regions,  nor  need 
we  be  surprised  at  the  slowness  of  their  movements,  when  we 
think  of  all  the  chariots,  all  the  arms  and  tools,  all  the  spoil 
which  this  moving  multitude  would  bear  with  it. 

The  nation  was  led  with  so  exact  and  wise  a  discipline  as 
to  call  forth  the  admiration  of  an  illustrious  Byzantine  critic. 
"  Their  vigorous  bodies,"  says  Sayous,  "  used  to  the  privations 
of  the  desert,  felt  neither  heat  nor  cold,  neither  hunger  nor 
thirst.  Accustomed  to  all  manner  of  hardships,  no  task  seemed 
impossible  to  them.  Every  kind  of  weapon,  sword,  bow,  or 
lance,  was  alike  to  them,  for  they  knew  how  to  fight  both  on 
foot  and  on  horseback ;  but,  horsemen  rather  than  foot- 
soldiers,  they  preferred  to  fight  on  their  small  and  agile  steeds, 
who  never  felt  fatigue,  and  the  arrow  was  their  favourite 
weapon.  When  arrayed  for  battle  they  were  divided  into 
bodies  of  one  thousand  men  each,  who  were  equally  prepared 
to  form  one  compact  mass  or  to  pour  down  upon  the  enemy  in 
flying  squadrons  from  every  side  at  once.  A  cloud  of  arrows 
was  the  prelude  to  a  furious  onslaught  which  bore  all  before 
it,  and  often  a  pretended  flight  finished  the  complete  rout  of 
their  enemies  when  they  were  madly  confident  of  victory." 

The  legends  of  the  Magyar  tell  us  the  names  of  some  of 
the  small  Slav  princes  who  were  the  first  to  give  way  before 


RUIN  OF  MORAVIA.  59 

this  terrible  invasion,  the  Slovak  Zalan,  the  Bulgarian  Men- 
marot  in  the  east  and  south  of  the  present  Hungary.  But 
they  tell  us  nothing  of  the  manner  in  which  the  Moravian 
kingdom  was  conquered.  By  the  end  of  the  tenth  century 
we  find  the  ruin  of  that  power  completed,  and  the  rule  of  the 
Magyars  established  in  the  whole  of  the  district  along  whose 
centre  runs  the  Danube,  and  whose  north  and  east  are 
bounded  by  the  Carpathian  Mountains. 

This  invasion  had  the  gravest  consequences  for  the  history 
of  these  lands.  "  It  was  not  the  mere  immigration  of  a  new 
Finnish  race,  destined  to  disappear  as  the  Huns  and  Avars 
had  already  disappeared,  or  to  become  absorbed  like  the 
Bulgarians  among  the  conquered  race.  The  intellectual 
qualities  of  the  Magyars,  the  finest  of  the  Altaic  races,  their 
physical  strength,  their  immense  numbers,  their  keen  patriotism, 
guaranteed  them  against  all  chance  of  destruction,  slow  or 
rapid." 

The  settlement  of  this  people  and  the  ruin  of  Moravia  was 
a  terrible  blow  to  the  Slavs.  The  Chekh  historian  Palacky 
says,  "The  invasion  of  the  Hungarians  was  the  gravest  mis- 
fortune that  ever  befell  our  race.  From  Holstein  to  the 
Peloponnesus  the  Slav  tribes  extended  ;  they  were  but  loosely 
united  and  their  customs  differed,  but  they  were  all  of  them 
vigorous  and  ready  for  civilization.  In  the  centre  of  this  long 
line  a  kernel  had  been  formed  by  the  eftbrts  of  Svatopluk. 
As  in  the  west,  under  Latin  influences,  the  Frankish  monarchy 
was  in  process  of  formation,  so  in  the  east,  under  Byzantine 
influences,  a  Slav  empire  might  have  been  formed  ;  but  the  fate 
of  Eastern  Europe  was  changed ;  the  advent  of  the  Magyars 
into  the  heart  of  the  growing  organism  completely  destroyed 
all  these  hopes." 

The  lands  on  which  they  had  settled  did  not  suffice  for  the 
new  conquerors ;  the  Danubian  districts  were  to  them  only  a 
halting-place,  a  base  of  operations  for  further  invasions.  The 
various  hordes  brought  with  them  nomadic  and  warlike  instincts 
which  time  and  the  influence  of  the  Christian  religion  could 


60  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

alone  transform  and  make  of  use  to  civilization.^  Italy,  "to 
whom  Heaven  has  granted  the  fatal  gift  of  beauty,"  was  the 
first  object  of  their  desire.  They  invaded  the  Venetian 
country  ;  but  the  City  of  the  Lagunes  beat  them  back,  as  it  had 
already  beaten  back  the  Huns.  In  907,  Arpad  died,  and, 
according  to  tradition,  his  remains  lie  at  the  foot  of  the  rock 
of  Buda,  where  he  had  placed  his  capital  or  camp.  Under 
his  young  son  Zoltan  the  invasions  continued  ;  the  Germans 
suffered  a  terrible  defeat  at  Presburg  in  907  ;  then  again  in 
910,  near  Augsburg;  but  they  repulsed  the  Magyars  before 
Wels,  where,  if  we  are  to  believe  their  account,  eighty-six 
Magyars  alone  escaped.  An  old  German  poem  proudly 
celebrates  this  victory  ;  "  They  fought  a  terrible  fight.  Many 
a  Hungarian  lost  his  life ;  the  Bavarians  avenged  their  women 
and  children.  So  many  Hungarians  were  killed  that  no  one 
could  tell  the  number  nor  count  the  dead.  They  fled  night 
and  day  till  they  reached  the  Leitha.  Yet  were  they  not  weary 
of  the  fight." 

Assuredly  they  were  not  weary  ;  their  unconquerable  hordes 
pushed  on  to  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  In  924,  it  was  again 
Italy  that  they  attacked,  and  even  Provence  and  Champagne 
saw  the  terrible  horsemen  within  their  borders.  At  last, 
however,"  Henry  of  Saxony  repulsed  them  before  Merseburg 
(933).  But  it  was  only  for  a  time;  their  invasions  continued 
under  the  successor  of  Zoltan,  and  it  was  not  until  after 
alternations  of  fortune  too  numerous  to  relate  here,  that  their 
progress  was  definitely  stopped  by  the  battle  of  Augsburg 
(955).  Thenceforward  the  Magyars  were  forced  to  fall  back, 
and  to  content  themselves  with  those  lands  which  they  had 
secured  in  the  valley  of  the  Danube. 

King  Geiza  (972-997)  was  the  first  pacific  ruler  of 
pagan  Hungary.     In  his  reign  the  Hungarians  tried  to  inter- 

'  It  was  long  believed  that  the  horror  into  which  the  nations  were 
thrown  by  the  Hungarians  was  the  origin  of  our  word  ogre.  Unhappily, 
Romance  philology  proves  that  this  word  comes  from  the  Latin  orcus. 
See  Littre's  Dictionary. 


MAGYAR  MYTHOLOGY.  6 1 

fere  in  a  quarrel  between  Henry  of  Bavaria  and  the  emperor 
Otto  II.  But  Otto,  detaching  the  frontier  district  of  Austria 
from  Bavaria,  conferred  it  upon  Leopold  of  Babenberg,  and  the 
new  ruler  succeeded  in  repulsing  the  Hungarians  near  Vienna. 
Thus  a  new  military  state  appeared  which  was  destined  to 
play  an  important  part  in  the  history  of  these  lands.  Hungary 
was  enclosed  within  limits  which  she  was  never  again  able  to 
cross,  and  even  within  these  limits  the  Magyars  were  not  the 
only  inhabitants ;  in  almost  every  part  they  were  surrounded 
by  Slavs,  whose  language  and  laws  were  to  exercise  over  them 
a  lasting  influence,  and  on  the  south-east  they  touched  on  that 
Romance  or  Wallachian  element  which,  from  the  time  of  the 
Roman  colonies  of  Trajan,  had  continued  to  develop  there. 
Numerous  marriages  with  these  neighbours  gradually  modified 
the  primitive  type  of  the  Magyars ;  they  have  long  ago  lost 
the  high  cheekbones  and  slanting  eyes  of  the  Mongols,  and, 
improved  by  the  intermixture  of  races,  they  have  now  become 
one  of  the  most  beautiful,  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  race  in 
Europe. 

Manners  and  Religion  of  the  Fagati  Magyars. 

There  are  but  few  traces  left  of  the  religion  of  the  pagan 
Hungarians,  and  from  these  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  a  system 
of  mythology.  They  would  seem  to  have  recognized  a  Supreme 
God  {Isten).  He  is  the  Father  of  men,  and  below  him  are  a 
certain  number  of  secondary  deities,  such  as  the  demon  Ordog 
and  Afdfio,  an  evil  spirit.  Below  them  again  are  the  fih/dcr, 
fairies  and  apparitions  who  influence  the  destiny  of  man  in 
various  ways.  "Somewhere  among  the  mountains  of  Transyl- 
vania lies  the  palace  of  the  king  of  the  fiinder,  where  he  dwells 
with  his  queen  and  many  beautiful  maidens  ;  this  palace  is 
built  of  silver  and  copper,  and  is  guarded  by  a  golden  lion ;  it 
is  reflected  in  a  shining  lake  and  surrounded  by  great  forests, 
where  the  song  of  birds  fills  the  air  with  delightful  melody.  A 
tradition  of  the  Comitate  of  Houth  tells  how,  in  a  spot  which  is 
•  See  p.  6S. 


62  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

now  deserted  and  covered  with  stones,  with  here  and  there  the 
stump  of  an  old  tree,  there  formerly  lived  fairies  who  at  break 
of  day  combed  their  golden  locks  over  the  country  in  such 
fashion  that  every  one  was  rich ;  but  a  miser  seized  one  of  the 
fairies,  intending  to  cut  off  her  hair,  whereupon  they  all  took 
flight,  and  the  land  was  filled  with  desolation,  and  poverty  took 
the  place  of  plenty.  In  the  town  of  Deva,  the  good  fairy  used 
to  appear  every  seven  years ;  while  other  fairies  built  walls  for 
men  and  made  them  rich  with  their  treasures,  till  human 
ingratitude  continually  disappointed  them  and  forced  them  to 
quit  the  place "  (Sayous).  Besides  the  fairies  of  the  earth, 
there  were  also  those  of  the  air  and  of  the  water.  One  of  the 
most  poetical  and  most  original  fancies  of  the  Magyar  imagina- 
tion was  Delibab,  the  fairy  of  the  south,  the  personification  of 
the  mirage,  who  was  the  daughter  of  the  plain,  the  sister  of  the 
sea,  and  the  beloved  of  the  wind.  Lakes  and  rivers  were 
peopled  by  mysterious  spirits.  The  elements  were  the  objects 
of  worsliip. 

"  Alone  among  all  created  things,  the  human  soul  preserved 
an  indestructible  and  immortal  existence ;  it  could  return 
to  earth,  especially  if  it  had  been  the  soul  of  an  illustrious 
warrior.  The  soul  passed  beneath  the  vault  of  death  on 
horseback,  and  crossed  a  bridge  which  led  to  happiness  in 
another  world, — a  warrior's  happiness,  as  the  funeral  cere- 
monies had  been  those  of  a  warrior  "  (Sayous). 

Power  was  divided  between  the  priests  and  the  prince.  The 
priests  offered  songs  and  prayers,  and  even  human  sacrifices, 
upon  altars  in  the  woods. 

A  nomadic  race,  such  as  were  the  Magyars  before  their 
conversion  to  Christianity,  could  have  but  a  very  imperfect 
form  of  government.  It  was  military  rather  than  political. 
The  power  of  the  highest  chief  had  no  limits  but  those 
imposed  by  the  right  of  self-government  possessed  by  each 
tribe.  He  was  chosen  by  the  voice  of  the  people,  and  it  would 
seem  that  the  choice  had  become  hereditary  in  the  family  of 
Arpad,  though  without  the  right  of  primogeniture  being  recog- 


PRIMITIVE  POLITICAL  INSTITUTIONS.  6^ 

nized  either  by  custom  or  law.  This  election  was  confirmed 
by  the  supreme  judicial  power,  and  by  the  general  assembly  of 
chiefs,  assisted  by  many  of  the  free  men. 

All  the  members  of  a  family,  and  even  of  a  tribe,  looked 
upon  each  other  as  brothers;  they  were  all  free  and  all  noble. 
Here  we  find  the  origin  of  that  numerous  class  oi petite  noblesse 
which  has  always  been  the  strength  of  Hungary.  "  The  head- 
ship of  the  families  and  tribes  was  partly  hereditary,  partly 
elective.  The  land  assigned  to  the  tribe  or  family  by  the  duke 
or  by  the  national  assembly  was  the  property  of  all,  even  when 
the  various  branches  of  the  family  had  divided  it  into  portions. 
On  these  they  might  build  the  huts  which  gradually  became 
houses,  and  pasture  their  cattle  until  it  was  brought  into  culti- 
vation, but  still  it  remained  the  property  of  the  tribe.  The 
chief  had  no  peculiar  domain.  It  was  not  until  later,  till 
Hungary  had  become  an  agricultural  country,  that  properties 
were  well  defined,  and  that  the  chiefs  became  proprietors  of 
part  of  the  land  and  feudal  lords  of  the  rest.  In  early  times 
the  ducal  tribe,  the  one  which  was  under  the  immediate  autho- 
rity of  the  prince,  settled  in  the  centre  of  the  country  near 
Pesth  and  Stuhl  Weissemberg  "  (Szekes  Fejervar). 

Naturally  the  old  Magyars  had  but  little  taste  for  town  life  ; 
they  left  the  towns  to  their  old  inhabitants,  or  else  peopled 
them  with  colonists  from  foreign  countries.  Their  nomadic 
life  afforded  but  small  opportunity  for  intellectual  or  artistic 
culture ;  the  Magyar  archseologists  can  find  few  ruins  belonging 
to  this  pagan  time,  and  not  a  verse  has  reached  us  of  the 
rhapsodies  sung  by  the  bards  to  the  honour  of  their  heroes, 
or  at  the  great  festivals  and  marriages.  All  we  know  is  that 
music  played  a  large  part  on  these  solemn  occasions.  The 
famous  melodies  of  the  Tsiganes  (gypsies)  may  perhaps  have 
preserved  for  us  some  faint  echo  of  those  early  songs. 


64  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  First  Princes  of  the  House  of  Arpad — Christian  Hungary — 
St.  Stephen  (997-1038). 

Geiza  I.  had  married  as  his  second  wife  a  sister  of  the  duke 
of  Poland,  Mieczyslaw.  She  had  been  converted  to  Christianity, 
and,  hke  Clotilde  of  France,  this  princess  knew  how  to  use  her 
influence  in  favour  of  her  reUgion.  She  persuaded  her  husband 
to  receive  the  missionaries  who  came  to  preach  the  Gospel  in 
the  country  of  the  Magyars,  and  Pilgrim,  archbishop  of  Lorch,^ 
undertook  the  systematic  conversion  of  the  nation.  The 
mention  of  him  in  the  Nibelungen  Lied  in  connection  with 
Etzel  (Attila),  king  of  the  Huns,  is  doubtless  due  to  the 
memory  of  this  mission.  He  sent  priests  from  his  diocese 
into  Hungary,  and  in  974  he  was  able  to  announce  to  the 
pope  five  thousand  conversions.  Foreigners  who  up  to  this' 
time  had  practised  their  religion  secretly  began  to  profess  it 
openly,  had  their  children  publicly  baptised,  and  built  churches. 
Geiza  himself  consented  to  be  baptised,  but  long  afterwards  he 
continued  to  mix  pagan  ceremonies  with  the  Christian  rites. 
The  great  Chekh  apostle,  St.  Adalbert  or  Vojtech,  bishop  of 
Prague,  continued  the  work  begun  by  Pilgrim.  About  994, 
he  went  to  Gran  (Esztergom),  where  the  duke  of  Hungary 
then  dwelt,  and  solemnly  baptized  the  son  of  Geiza,  to  whom 
he  gave  the  name  of  Stephen.  Henceforth  the  court  of  the 
duke  became  the  resort  of  knights  from  all  the  neighbouring 
countries,  but  especially  from  Germany,  and  these  knights, 
entering  into  intimate  relations  with  the  native  nobiHty,  drew 
Hungary  and  the  empire  into  still  closer  union.  Prince 
Stephen,  heir  presumptive  to  the  throne,  married  the  princess 

'  [Lorch,  the  Roman  Laureacum,  on  the  Danube,  was  destroyed  by  the 
Avars  in  738,  and  the  see  transferred  to  Passau.  The  bishop  of  Passau 
was  subject  to  the  archbishop  of  Salzburg,  but  some  of  Pilgrim's  prede- 
cessors had  held  the  title  of  archbishop  of  Lorch,  and,  in  reward  for  his  zeal 
in  the  conversion  of  the  Magyars,  Pilgrim  again  received  it  from  the  pope, 
with  jurisdiction  over  Bavaria,  Lower  Pannoiiia,  Moesia,  and  the  adjoining 
Slav  countries.  But  the  grant  was  not  confirmed  by  the  emperor,  and 
Pilgrim's  successors  remained  simple  bishops  of  Passau  and  suffragans  of 
Salzburg. — J.  C.  Robertson,  History  of  Christian  Church,  bk.  v.  ch.  vii.] 


REIGN  OF  STEPHEN.  65 

Gisella,  daughter  of  the  duke  of  Bavaria,  while  one  of  the 
daughters  of  Geiza  became  the  wife  of  the  Pohsh  duke 
Boleslaw,  and  another  married  Urseohis,  doge  of  Venice. 
Through  these  alliances,  Hungary  obtained  for  itself  a  recog- 
nized place  among  European  states,  and  the  work  begun  so 
well  by  Geiza  was  completed  by  Stephen,  to  whom  was  reserved 
the  honour  of  establishing  the  position  of  his  kingdom  in 
Europe  and  of  completing  its  conversion.  When  this  prince 
came  to  the  throne  (997),  the  countries  surrounding  Hungary 
were  all  ruled  by  celebrated  princes.  Otto  HI.  governed 
Germany  ;  Boleslav  HI.,  Bohemia;  Boleslau  the  Brave,  Poland ; 
Vladimir  the  Great,  Russia  ;  and  Basil,  Constantinople.  In 
order  to  maintain  the  existence  of  Hungary  in  the  midst  of 
these  flourishing  states,  it  was  needful  that  it  should  attain  the 
same  degree  of  civilization,  and  this  was  the  work  of  Stephen. 
The  Hungarians  honour  him  as  the  second  founder  of  their 
country,  the  first  being  the  legendary  Arpad. 

In  the  very  beginning  of  his  reign,  Stephen  had  to  struggle 
against  the  revolts  of  a  pagan  chief,  Koppany,  who  saw  in  the 
introduction  of  Christianity  danger  to  the  national  institutions, 
but  he  was  at  last  overcome  beneath  the  walls  of  Veszprim. 
Once  freed  from  this  formidable  enemy,  Stephen  could  give 
all  his  thoughts  to  the  spread  of  Christianity  in  his  territories. 
His  zeal  was  remarkable.  "  Hungary  became  Catholic,"  says  a 
Magyar  historian,  "  not  through  apostolic  teaching,  nor 
through  the  invitation  of  the  Holy  See,  but  through  the  laws 
of  king  Stephen  "  (Verboczy).  He  was  not  always  content  to 
use  persuasion  alone  to  lead  his  subjects  to  the  new  faith ;  he 
hesitated  not  to  use  threats  also.  When  Hungary  became 
Catholic,  there  was  some  danger  that  she  might  become  an 
object  of  ambition  to  the  German  clergy.  Pannonia  was 
subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  German  bishops  of  Lorch 
and  Salzburg,  and  these  now  laid  claim  to  ecclesiastical 
authority  and  tithes.  It  was  needful  to  free  Hungary  from 
their  control,  and  to  secure  for  her  a  national  clergy ;  it  was 
needful  to  remove  every  pretext  for  the  intervention  of  the 

F 


66  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Holy  Roman  empire,  and  every  opportunity  for  its  claiming  a 
suzerainty  over  the  nation  which  would  be  sure  to  prove  more 
or  less  burdensome.  To  this  end  Stephen  sent  an  ambassador 
to  Rome,  to  treat  directly  with  pope  Sylvester,  who  graciously 
received  the  homage  done  by  him  for  his  kingdom,  and,  by 
a  letter  dated  the  27th  of  March,  1000,  announced  that  he  took 
the  people  of  Hungary  under  the  protection  of  the  Church. 
By  the  same  brief  he  granted  the  royal  crown  to  Stephen,  and 
gave  his  sanction  to  the  creation  of  the  archbishopric  of  Gran, 
and  of  the  several  bishoprics  that  the  new  king  was  about  to 
found.  Besides  this,  he  conferred  on  him  the  privilege  of 
having  the  cross  always  borne  before  him,  as  a  symbol  of  the 
apostolic  power  which  he  granted  to  him.  The  authenticity 
of  this  pontifical  letter  has  indeed  been  disputed ;  but,  however 
that  may  be,  the  emperor  of  Austria,  king  of  Hungary,  still 
bears  the  title  of  Apostolic  Majesty. 

On  the  15  th  of  August  in  the  same  year  the  king  was 
crowned  at  Gran,  with  the  crown  sent  to  him  by  the  pontiff. 
The  coronation  of  Stephen  secured  the  continuance  of  power 
to  the  dynasty  of  Arpad.  He  still,  however,  met  with  some 
resistance,  especially  in  Transylvania,  where  its  prince,  Giulay, 
refused  to  admit  the  Christian  religion  into  his  province. 
Stephen  marched  against  him,  defeated  him,  and  granted 
Transylvania  to  a  vo'ievode  ^  of  the  race  of  Arpad ;  he  also 
defeated  and  killed  a  prince  of  the  Petcheneguens,  who  had 
similarly  refused  to  embrace  Christianity.  He  reconquered 
part  of  Moravia  from  Bohemia,  and  dared  even  to  attack 
Germany  on  the  side  of  Bavaria,  but,  being  invaded  in  his 
turn,  he  was  obliged  to  make  peace.  The  river  March  became 
the  north-western  frontier  between  Hungary  and  Germany, 
and  remains  so  to  this  day. 

'  Voievode  is  a  word  of  Slav  origin  which  means  duke  {dux,  commander 
of  an  army). 


HUNGARY  AN  INDEPENDENT  KINGDOM.  6/ 

The  Laws  of  St.  Stephen. 

Under  this  great  king,  Hungary  became  a  completely 
independent  kingdom  between  the  two  empires  of  the  East 
and  West,  and  was  probably  enabled  to  preserve  its  inde- 
pendence by  that  equilibrium  which  was  now  established  be- 
tween those  two  ambitious  rivals.  The  state  was  completely 
united,  and  was  not  divided  into  appanages.  The  king  was 
supreme,  but  he  had  a  council  of  the  old  and  wise  men 
continually  at  hand  to  advise  him.  "  For,"  said  Stephen  in 
the  directions  which  he  wrote  for  his  son  Emerich,  "  it  is 
right  that  each  should  busy  himself  with  that  which  suits  him 
best,  the  young  with  fighting,  the  old  with  counsel."  He  him- 
self calls  this  institution  regalis  senatiis,  7'cgale  concilium^ 
primatiim  convetitus,  commune  concilium.  The  national  his- 
torians see  in  it  the  first  elements  of  the  national  diet ;  rough 
beginnings,  doubtless,  and  as  little  subject  to  fixed  rules  as 
had  formerly  been  the  meetings  of  the  tribes  in  the  Puszta.^ 

Ecclesiastically,  the  kingdom  wvas  divided  into  ten  bishoprics, 
all  subject  to  the  archbishopric  of  Gran  (Esztergom).  They 
were  fixed  at  Kalocsa,  Veszprim,  Pecs,  Bacs,  Raab,  Erlau 
(Agria),  Csanad,  Nagy-Varad,  and  Karlsburg  in  Transylvania. 
Stephen  also  founded  several  abbeys,  which  were  granted 
*to  the  Benedictines,  and  in  which  schools  were  opened  ;  and 
religious  edifices  were  built  by  Italian  or  Byzantine  architects. 

This  king  delighted  in  pious  foundations ;  the  booty  he 
found  in  the  camps  of  the  Petcheneguens  he  employed  in 
building  the  great  church  at  Fejervar.  He  insisted  on  the 
exact  payment  of  tithes,  and  obliged  villages  and  estates  of  a 
certain  size  to  group  themselves  in  tens  for  the  building  of 
churches.  Those  who  neglected  their  religious  duties  were 
severely  punished.  All  property  belonging  to  the  clergy 
was  placed  under  the  protection  of  the  king  {sub  defensione 
regis),  exactly  like  Crown  property. 

Politically  the  nation  was  divided  into  comitats.     The  germ 

*  [The  Puszta  is  the  great  Hungai'ian  plain  which  occupies  the  larger 
part  of  the  country.] 


68  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  this  division  had  existed  already  among  the  Slavs,  who  had 
had  to  make  way  for  the  Magyars,  and  the  name,  like  most  of 
the  political  terms  used  in  Hungary,  was  borrowed  from  the  Slav 
language.  It  was  the  name  zhupan  (head  of  the  zhupa),  which 
became  in  the  Magyar  ispa7t,  a  word  which  plays  so  prominent 
a  part  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  Each  comitat  possessed 
a  camp  {var),  and  these  camps  formed  together  a  complete 
system  of  defence.  The  comitat  was  governed  by  a  count 
{ispan,  whence  comes  the  German,  gespann),  who  exercised 
civil  and  military  powers  in  the  name  of  the  king ;  he  was 
aided  by  a  general,  major  exercitus,  by  a  castellan,  or  governor, 
and  by  centurions  and  decurions. 

When  Stephen  began  to  reign,  property  was  of  two  kinds, 
the  property  of  the  state  and  the  property  of  the  tribe. 
Individual  ownership  had  no  existence.  Stephen  maintained 
the  property  of  the  state,  but  put  an  end  to  all  tribal  rights ; 
he  declared  that  each  citizen  had  the  right  to  keep  and  to 
bequeath  to  his  children  the  possessions  he  had  acquired,  or 
which  he  had  received  from  the  king.  But  we  must  not  look 
upon  these  royal  gifts  as  hereditary  fiefs.  The  aristocracy 
was  formed  of  those  who  held  high  offices,  and  was  divided 
into  two  classes.  The  first  included  the  counts,  bishops,  the 
leaders  of  the  army,  and  perhaps  the  descendants  of  the  chiefs 
of  the  old  Magyar  tribes.  The  second  was  composed  more 
especially  of  warriors.  After  these  two  classes  came  the 
soldiers  of  the  fortified  towns  and  the  citizens.  Quite  early 
we  find  a  large  number  of  Germans  among  the  inhabitants  of 
certain  towns  (Old  Buda,  Gran,  Raab,  Szathmar,  Nemethi); 
they  are  known  by  the  name  of  hospites.  The  towns  exercised 
municipal  self-government  under  the  control  of  the  ispan  and 
the  bishop.  The  mass  of  the  people  did  not  possess  land. 
The  artisans  {iidvornici,  from  the  Slav  dvor,  or  court)  were 
the  connecting  link  between  the  nobles  and  the  serfs.  Stephen 
did  not  suppress  slavery,  but  he  improved  the  condition  of  the 
slaves. 

The  king  was  supreme  judge,  and  under  some  circumstances 


THE  HUNGARIAN  PENAL    CODE.  6g 

he  administered  justice  in  person.  Bishops  and  abbots,  civil 
and  miUtary  dignitaries,  could  only  be  summoned  to  appear  in 
the  king's  court,  presided  over  either  by  the  sovereign  himself, 
or  by  the  count  palatine  {riador,  Slav  tiadvor,  head  of  the 
court).  This  court  acted  also  as  a  court  of  appeal  against 
all  judgments  delivered  by  the  counts  of  towns,  bishoprics,  or 
abbeys.  Oral  witness  was  admitted  as  well  as  trial  by  single 
combat.  The  penal  code  was  very  severe.  The  right  of 
sanctuary  was  refused  to  all  who  conspired  against  the  king  or 
country,  and  he  who  sowed  discord  among  the  people  was 
condemned  to  lose  his  tongue.  A  false  witness  had  his  arm 
cut  off;  murderers  had  to  pay  a  heavy  fine ;  at  the  same  time, 
the  murderer  of  a  slave  was  only  obliged  to  pay  the  value  of 
the  slave  to  his  master.  The  murder  of  a  wife  w\as  valued 
according  to  the  rank  of  the  murderer ;  a  count  paid  to  the 
family  of  his  wife  fifty  young  oxen,  a  warrior  only  ten.  Human 
life  was  tolerably  cheap.  The  loss  of  a  limb  cost  more;  it 
could  only  be  atoned  for  by  the  loss  of  the  same  limb,  thus 
putting  in  practice  the  old  Biblical  precept,  "  an  eye  for  an  eye, 
a  tooth  for  a  tooth."  Rape  was  punished  by  the  payment  of 
ten  or  five  oxen,  according  to  the  rank  of  the  criminal.  The 
thief  who  could  not  restore  the  value  of  the  stolen  thing  was 
sold  as  a  slave.  In  such  fashion  did  this  imperfect  legislation 
combine  Christian  principles  with  the  customs  of  barbarians. 

The  revenue  of  the  king  was  made  up  of  the  contributions 
of  the  7/dvornici  and  the  lower  classes,  the  taxes  on  towns,  the 
produce  of  mines  and  salt-works,  a  monopoly  of  the  coinage, 
and  some  portion  of  all  fines.  Besides  this,  subjects  were 
bound  to  maintain  the  royal  household  as  the  king  travelled 
from  place  to  place.  Every  man  had  to  serve  as  a  soldier ;  the 
warriors  of  the  nation  were  summoned  by  a  bloody  sword  sent 
from  comitat  to  comitat ;  and  the  castles  were  the  meeting-places 
of  the  nobles.  The  laws  of  Stephen  are  contained  in  fifty-six 
articles  divided  into  two  books.  His  ideas  on  all  matters  of 
government  are  also  to  be  found  in  the  counsels  which  he 
wrote,  or  caused  to  be  written,   for  his  son  Emerich.     This 


JO  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

book  has  more  than  one  claim  on  our  interest.  Among  the 
counsels  which  the  sovereign  gives  to  his  son  is  one  which 
would  seem  to  bear  a  prophetic  character.  He  bids  him  to 
treat  well  all  foreigners  and  guests  :  nam  unites  linguae  taiiusque 
maris  regnum  imbecille  est.  Those  Magyars  of  the  nineteenth 
century  who  wish  to  impose  their  language  and  their  rule 
on  the  various  peoples  of  the  kingdom  would  seem  to  have 
forgotten  this  precept  of  the  apostolic  king. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

HUNGARY    UNDER   THE    SUCCESSORS    OF    ST.    STEPHEN 
(1038-I301). 

The  First  Successors  of  St.  Stephen — Ladislas  the  Holy 
(1077-1095). 

The  son  for  whom  the  great  king  had  written  his  maxims  died 
before  his  father  in  1031,  and  is  honoured  as  a  saint  by  the 
Church.  The  last  years  of  king  Stephen  were  harassed  by 
rivalries  and  plots.  He  died  on  the  15th  of  August,  1038, 
thirty-eight  years  after  his  coronation  to  the  very  day,  and  was 
buried  at  Szekes  Fejervar  (Alba  regia,  Stuhl  Weissenburg). 
Stephen  had  chosen  as  his  successor  his  nephew  Peter,  the  son 
of  the  doge  Urseolus.  This  prince,  a  stranger  in  Hungary, 
made  himself  unpopular  by  his  insolence  and  by  the  brutal 
way  in  which  he  behaved  towards  the  widow  of  his  prede- 
cessor; the  Hungarians  rose  against  him,  and  elected  in  his 
stead  Samuel  Ala,  the  chief  of  one  of  the  tribes.  Peter  there- 
upon fled  to  Germany,  and  implored  help  from  Henry  HI., 
promising  to  pay  tribute  to  that  prince  if  he  would  replace  him 
on  his  throne.  The  German  diet  declared  war  against  Hungary ; 
the  imperial  army  penetrated  as  far  as  Gran,  and  Samuel  Ala 
was  obliged  to  purchase  peace  on  humiliating  conditions. 
More  fortunate  in  a  second  campaign,  he  repulsed  the  Germans, 
but  his  tyranny,  which  proved  as  great  as  that  of  Peter,  pro- 
voked a  fresh  insurrection.  Peter  again  sought  his  old  allies, 
and  on  the  occasion  of  a  solemn  festival  he  did  homage  to  the 


72  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARV. 

emperor  for  the  kingdom  of  Hungary  and  received  investiture 
of  it.  This  act  of  humihation,  however,  was  of  no  avail ;  a 
popular  assembly  at  Csanad  pronounced  him  dethroned,  and 
proclaimed  in  his  stead  Andrew,  son  of  Ladislas  the  Bald 
{1046). 

The  beginning  of  Andrew's  reign  was  marked  by  a  violent 
reaction  among  the  pagans  against  Christians  and  foreigners, 
but  Andrew  succeeded  in  maintaining  his  position,  had  himself 
consecrated,  and  was  able  at  last  to  forbid,  on  pain. of  death,  all 
exercise  of  the  rites  of  paganism.  He  was  attacked  by  the 
emperor,  but,  with  the  help  of  his  brother  Bela,  successfully 
resisted  him,  and  concluded  an  honourable  peace.  Soon  after- 
wards, however,  he  was  dethroned  by  Eela  (1061),  and  died 
fighting  on  the  banks  of  the  Tisza.  Bela,  also,  had  to  suppress 
a  new  rising  of  the  pagans  against  Christianity  \  he  was  suc- 
cessful in  doing  so,  and  endeavoured  by  wise  economic 
measures  to  remedy  the  disastrous  condition  into  which  Hun- 
gary had  fallen  as  the  result  of  these  perpetual  struggles.  He 
died  from  an  accident  in  1063.  According  to  the  Asiatic 
custom  which  still  prevails  in  Turkey,  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  nephew  Solomon  (1063).  This  prince  was  only  twelve 
years  of  age,  and  the  emperor,  Henry  IV.,  took  advantage  of 
his  youth  to  place  him  in  a  humiliating  position  of  tutelage. 
During  his  reign  the  kingdom  was  ravaged  by  the  Polovtses  or 
Cumans,  who  invaded  Transylvania,  but  were  defeated  at  the 
battle  of  Cserhalom  (1067),  where,  according  to  a  contem- 
porary, the  shorn  heads  of  the  Polovtses  fell  to  the  "ground 
like  pumpkins.  The  Petcheneguens  were  also  defeated  on  the 
banks  of  the  Danube.  But  unhappily  the  royal  house  was 
harassed  by  continual  intrigues.  The  enemies  of  Solomon 
accused  him  of  being  the  creature  of  the  Germans,  and  re- 
proached him  for  having  done  homage  to  the  emperor  for 
a  state  which  belonged  to  St.  Peter,  Pope  Gregory  VII., 
who  was  then  struggling  against  the  emperor,  encouraged  the 
rebels.  "  The  kingdom  of  Hungary,"  he  said,  "  owes  obedi- 
ence to  none  but  the  Church."     Prince  Geiza  was  proclaimed 


LADISLAS   THE  HOLY.  73 

king  in  the  place  of  Solomon,  but  he  died  without  having 
reigned. 

He  was  succeeded  by  Ladislas  the  Holy  (1077),  who  was 
able  to  make  himself  equally  independent  of  emperor  and 
pope.  He  withstood  successfully  all  Solomon's  attempts  to 
recover  the  crown  which  had  been  torn  from  him,  and  managed 
to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the  court  of  Rome,  which  consented 
to  canonize  both  king  Stephen  and  his  son  Emerich,  He  was 
not  less  fortunate  in  his  struggles  against  the  Cumans  and 
Petcheneguens,  who  continued  to  invade  Hungary.  He  over- 
came them  on  the  banks  of  the  Temes,  and  then  offered  them 
a  permanent  settlement  in  the  country  on  condition  that  they 
became  Christians.  They  accepted  his  offer,  and  colonized 
a  portion  of  the  valley  of  the  Tisza,  being  bound,  in  return  for 
the  land  they  received,  to  furnish  bowmen  to  the  royal  army. 
On  the  death,  moreover,  of  the  Croat  king,  Stephen  II.  (1090), 
Ladislas  obliged  that  country  to  accept  as  their  new  king  the 
Magyar  prince  Almos,  son  of  Geiza  I.,  and  thus  prepared 
the  way  for  that  union  of  the  two  crowns  which  was  soon 
after  to  be  effected. 

Like  St.  Stephen,  Ladislas  was  the  law-giver  of  his  country. 
In  a  great  assembly  of  prelates,  nobles,  and  citizens,  held  at 
Szabolcz  in  1092,  he  promulgated  laws  of  which  the  most 
important  treat  of  religious  matters.  They  authorize  the  mar- 
riage of  priests  notwithstanding  the  recent  decisions  of  Gregory 
VII.  on  ecclesiastical  celibacy,  and  they  carefully  regulate  the 
collection  of  tithes.  They  contain  penal  measures  against  the 
last  adherents  of  paganism ;  any  one  who  ofters  sacrifices  near 
a  tree  or  a  spring  is  condemned  to  forfeit  an  ox ;  the  Jew  Avho 
works  on  Sunday,  the  Mussulman  convert  who  returns  to 
Mahomedanism,  are  both  to  be  punished.  Other  laws  of  St. 
Ladislas  concern  the  administration  of  justice,  enact  penalties 
for  theft,  and  regulate  the  protection  of  property.  They  are 
extremely  severe  ;  the  theft  of  a  goose  is  punished  by  the  loss 
of  an  eye,  and  all  acts  of  violence  are  repressed  with  Draconian 
rigour.     The  Church  has  shown  her  gratitude  to  the  monarch 


74  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

who  gave  her  so  many  proofs  of  his  attachment  and  submission 
by  placing  him  among  the  number  of  her  saints. 

Koloman  (1095-1114) — Croatia  iinited  to  Hungary — German 
Colonies —  Wars  7vitli  Galicia  and  Venice. 

The  dying  Ladislas  chose  his  nephew  Koloman  as  his 
successor.  This  young  prince,  destined  at  first  for  the  Church, 
was  very  learned  for  those  times,  and  was  called  by  his  con- 
temporaries "  The  Bookman  "  or  Scholar  (Konyves).  Shortly- 
after  his  accession  the  crusaders  marched  through  Hungary. 
The  excesses  committed  by  these  bands  of  enthusiastic  but  un- 
disciplined men  were  but  little  likely  to  inspire  the  Magyars 
with  enthusiasm  for  their  cause.  Koloman,  after  having  allowed 
the  first  portions  of  the  army  to  march  through  his  lands,  was 
obliged  to  arm  his  subjects,  not  to  free  the  Holy  Sepulchre, 
but  to  fight  against  the  plunderers  who  were  ravaging  his 
country.  When  Godfrey  of  Bouillon  reached  the  frontier,  he 
demanded  an  interview  with  Koloman,  which  took  place  not 
iar  from  Soprony,  on  the  bank  of  Lake  Neusiedl  {Ferto  tava). 
Koloman,  in  order  to  secure  good  order  and  the  peace  of  the 
land,  fixed  the  route  of  the  crusaders  and  demanded  hostages, 
of  whom  the  first  was  Godfrey's  brother  Baldwin.  By  these 
means  all  the  annoyance  and  disorder  which  had  arisen  from 
the  first  armies  were  successfully  avoided. 

The  most  important  act  of  this  reign  was  the  annexation 
of  Croatia.  In  1090,  St.  Ladislas  had  been  elected  to  the 
throne  of  Croatia,  and  he,  on  his  death,  left  the  government 
of  it  to  his  nephew  Almos,  who  very  soon  made  himself  un- 
popular. Koloman  drove  him  out  of  Croatia,  and  had  himself 
proclaimed  king.  He  next  set  about  the  conquest  of  Dalmatia 
from  the  Venetians,  seized  the  principal  towns,  Spalato  (Spljet), 
Zara  (Zadir),  and  Trogir  (Trau),  and  granted  them  full  power 
of  self-government.  Then  (1102)  he  had  himself  crowned,  at 
Belgrade,  king  of  Croatia  and  Dalmatia.  From  this  time  the 
position  of  Croatia,  as  regarded  Hungaryj  was  very  much  the 
same  as  the  position  of  Hungary  in  regard  to  Austria  in  later 


EEIGN  OF  KOLOMAN.  75 

times.  The  destinies  of  the  two  kingdoms  of  St.  Stephen  and 
Zvonimir  were  united,  but  Croatia  maintained  a  more  or  less 
definite  individuah'ty,  and  the  ban^  or  viceroy,  of  Croatia  was 
the  representative  of  the  autonomy  of  a  Slav  state  associated 
with  a  Magyar  state,  a  condition  of  things  which  has  remained 
down  to  the  present  day.  At  this  time  the  Croats  freely 
chose  as  their  king  one  who  undertook  to  respect  their  laws. 
They  preserved  the  right  of  administering  their  internal  affairs 
as  they  chose,  of  electing  their  own  bishops  and  zhiipans,  and 
of  granting  the  rights  of  citizenship  to  whomsoever  they  would ; 
they  kept  their  own  coinage,  army,  and  taxes.  The  relations 
between  the  two  kingdoms  are  still  partly  regulated  by  this 
old  agreement,  and  the  Croats  proudly  quote  this  maxim  of 
constitutional  law  ;  regnuvi  regno  non  praescribit  leges. 

Koloman  continued  the  legislative  work  of  Stephen  and 
St.  Ladislas,  and  improved  the  penal  laws  of  his  predecessor, 
making  them  more  merciful.  He  was  sufficiently  liberal  and 
enlightened  to  do  away  with  all  trials  for  sorcery,  "inasmuch 
as  there  are  no  sorcerers  " — de  strigis  quae  nullae  sunt  ne  ulla 
quaestio  fiat.  He  increased  the  number  of  the  law-courts, 
restrained  judicial  combats,  and  established  a  rigorous  distinc- 
tion between  ecclesiastical  and  lay  discipline.  The  celibacy 
of  the  clergy  ceased  to  be  optional. 

The  end  of  Koloman's  reign  was  disturbed  by  revolts  and 
conspiracies  caused  by  his  brother  Almos,  who  had  been  de- 
prived by  him  of  the  government  of  Croatia.  After  pardoning 
him  several  times,  Koloman  yielded  to  the  barbarous  spirit  of 
the  age,  and  caused  the  eyes,  both  of  his  brother  and  of  his 
little  nephew  of  five  years  of  age,  to  be  put  out ;  but  this  is  the 
only  act  of  barbarity  that  history  records  of  this  enlightened 
sovereign,  who  enlarged  the  kingdom  till  its  boundary  touched 
the  sea,  and  finally  secured  its  position  in  civilised  Europe. 
Among  the  kings  who  occupied  the  throne  of  Hungary  during 
the  twelfth  century,  none  can  be  compared  to  Koloman  and 
St.  Ladislas. 

Stephen  H.,  the  son  of  Koloman,  was  only  thirteen  years 


y6  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-IIUNGAR  Y. 

old  when  he  came  to  the  throne ;  he  died  when  he  was  thirty, 
without  having  rendered  any  great  service  to  his  country.  He 
appointed  as  his  successor  that  son  of  Almos  whom  Koloman 
had  blinded,  who  reigned  under  the  title  of  Bela  II.  the  Blind 
( 1 1 3 1 ).  Bela  revenged  himself  cruelly  on  all  whom  he  suspected 
of  having  caused  his  misfortunes,  and  it  is  related  that  in  one 
single  day  at  the  diet  of  Arad  (1132)  he  ordered  sixty-eight 
of  his  enemies  to  be  slain.  Geiza  II.,  the  son  of  Bela,  succeeded 
him  (1141)  at  the  age  of  ten.  Comparatively  speaking,  his 
reign  was  a  happy  one ;  and  it  was  marked  by  an  event  of 
considerable  importance  in  the  internal  history  of  Hungary, — 
the  arrival  of  Saxon  colonists  in  Northern  Hungary  and  Tran- 
sylvania. Faithful  to  the  teaching  of  St.  Stephen,  Geiza  settled 
them  in  the  comitat  of  Zips  (Szepes)  at  the  foot  of  the  Car- 
pathians, and  in  the  valley  of  the  Maros,  on  the  left  bank  of 
the  Lower  Tisza.  The  Germans  were  easily  able  to  reclaim  the 
forests  which  clothed  the  sides  of  the  Tatra,  and  founded 
there  four  and  twenty  towns,  which  had  the  right  of  electing 
their  own  priests  and  magistrates  according  to  statutes  written 
in  their  own  language.  Their  obligations  to  the  king  were 
light ;  they  had  to  furnish  him  with  a  certain  number  of  troops, 
and  to  recognize  his  supreme  authority  in  judicial  matters. 
The  Saxons  of  Transylvania  enjoyed  complete  autonomy. 
Sole  proprietors  of  the  soil,  they  could  prevent  the  settlement 
on  it  of  any  Magyar  or  Szekler,  and  their  national  assemblies 
{tiniversitas  natmiis  Saxoiiicae)  had  an  exclusive  right  to  legis- 
late for  them.  It  is  most  important  to  observe  their  institutions 
at  the  moment  of  their  establishment;  in  such  a  country  as  Hun- 
gary, where  there  are  many  nationalities  and  various  historical 
rights,  they  are  still  interesting  from  a  political  point  of  view. 

The  reign  of  Stephen  III.,  son  of  Geiza  II.  (1161),  was 
disturbed  by  the  rivalry  of  his  two  uncles,  Stephen  IV.  and 
Ladislas.  Manuel,  the  Byzantine  emperor,  took  the  side  of 
Stephen  IV.,  who  was  his  son-in-law,  and  at  one  time  hoped  to 
be  able  to  bring  Hungary  under  the  protectorate  of  the  eastern 
empire.     But  Hungary  refused  to  submit  to  the  control  of  the 


STEPHEN  THE    THIRD.  yy 

foreigner,  and  Stephen  III.  died  on  the  throne  of  his  father 
(1173).  His  brother,  Bela  III.,  had  been  partly  educated  at 
Constantinople,  and  he  was  received  with  distrust  by  the 
Magyars,  owing  to  their  hostility  to  Byzantium.  The  primate 
of  Hungary  refused  to  crown  him,  and  he  was  obliged  to  have 
recourse  to  the  bishop  of  Kalocsa.  But  he  triumphed  over 
all  ditficulties,  and  showed  so  much  ability  and  moderation 
that  he  gained  the  love  of  his  subjects  and  the  esteem  of  his 
neighbours.  He  married  the  princess  Margaret  of  France, 
daughter  of  Philip  Augustus  and  widow  of  prince  Henry  of 
England.  During  the  negotiations,  he  drew  up  an  interesting 
statement  for  the  king  of  France  of  the  revenues  of  the  kingdom 
of  Hungary. 

The  reigns  of  the  last  three  princes  were  signalized  by  wars 
against  the  Russians  of  Galicia  and  against  Venice,  The 
territories  of  Koloman  had  been  ravaged  by  the  Curaans,  with 
the  help  of  Volodar,  prince  of  Eastern  Galicia,  whose  capital 
was  Premysl.  Koloman  had  attacked  Volodar,  but  had  been 
defeated  while  besieging  Premysl.  Stephen  III.  determined 
to  avenge  his  father,  and  conquered  the  city  in  11 27,  but  he 
was  driven  back  by  the  Poles  acting  in  alliance  with  the 
Russians.  Later  on,  Geiza  lent  troops  to  his  brother-in-law, 
the  grand  prince  of  Kiev,  to  help  him  against  the  princes  of 
Souzdal  and  Zvenigorod.  In  the  reign  of  Bela  III.,  Vladimir, 
prince  of  Premysl,  was  forced  to  take  refuge  in  Hungary,  and 
Bela  took  advantage  of  this  circumstance  to  establish  his  son 
Andrew  in  Galicia,  from  whence  indeed  he  was  soon  forced 
to  fly,  the  Poles  again  aiding  the  Russians.  Bela  had,  however, 
obliged  some  part  of  Galicia  to  do  homage  to  him,  and  on  this 
were  founded  the  claims  of  Hungary  to  Galicia,  claims  to  which 
Andrew  II.  thought  to  give  some  colour  by  taking  the  title  of 
king  of  Galicia  and  Lodomeria,  and  which  were  revived  by 
Austria  at  the  time  of  the  first  partition  of  Poland. 

Meantime  the  republic  of  Venice,  seeing  the  rule  of 
Hungary  definitely  established  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic, 
took  alarm  at  so  formidable  a  neighbour.     The  doge  Falieri 


78  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

asked  for  the  alliance  and  help  of  Constantinople,  whose  power 
was  also  threatened  by  the  growth  of  Hungary.  He  then 
equipped  a  fleet,  and  attacked  the  fortified  towns  on  the  coast, 
capturing  Zadar  (Zara),  Spljet  (Spalato),  Trogir  (Trau),  Bel- 
grade, and  Sibenico.  In  the  war  which  followed,  the  town  of 
Belgrade,  where  Koloman  had  had  himself  crowned,  was  entirely 
destroyed,  and  Zara  left  in  the  possession  of  the  Venetians.  The 
rest  of  Dalmatia  remained  in  the  hands  of  Bela  IH. ;  he  treated 
the  province  well,  and  confided  its  defence  to  the  family  of  the 
Frangipani,  or  Frankopans,  henceforward  well  known  in  history. 

The  relations  of  Hungary  with  the  two  empires  of  East  and 
West  spread  the  renown  of  her  power  through  the  whole  of 
Europe.  In  1147,  king  Louis  VII.  and  the  emperor  Conrad 
crossed  Hungary  on  their  way  to  the  crusade,  and  Louis  VII. 
speaks  highly  in  his  letters  to  Suger  of  the  warm  welcome  which 
he  received,  though  the  German  chronicler,  Otto  of  Freisingen, 
draws  a  picture  of  the  country  which  is  not  very  flattering,  and 
represents  the  Magyars  as  little  more  than  well-disciplined 
savages  :  "  One  might  well  reproach  fortune,  or  stand  amazed 
at  the  long-suffering  of  God,  when  one  sees  so  fair  a  country 
in  the  possession  of  such  monsters."  The  connection  with 
France  was  strengthened  by  the  marriage  of  Bela  with  the 
princess  Margaret.  Hungarian  students  began  to  find  their 
way  to  Paris. 

In  1 1 89,  the  emperor  Frederick  Barbarossa  crossed  the 
country  at  the  head  of  the  third  crusade ;  he  was  received 
with  great  magnificence,  and  fetes  were  held  in  his  honour. 
At  this  time,  Constance,  the  daughter  of  Bela,  was  affianced  to 
the  duke  of  Suabia. 

The  relations  of  Hungary  with  Byzantium  were  less 
friendly.  On  several  occasions  Constantinople  endeavoured 
to  bring  the  country  under  her  control ;  but,  with  the  help  of 
Vladislav  king  of  Bohemia,  the  Hungarians  were  able  to 
maintain  their  independence. 


ANDREW  THE  SECOND.  79 

Andrew  II.  (1205-12 35) — The  Golden  Bull. 

The  two  sons  of  Bela  III.,  Emerich  (Imre)  and  Andrew, 
both  occupied  the  throne,  the  former  from  1196  to  1204,  and 
the  latter  from  1205  to  1235.  Bela  III.,  who  had  been  pre- 
vented by  death  from  fulfilling  the  vow  he  had  taken  of  going  to 
Palestine,  had  made  Andrew  promise  to  accomplish  it  in  his 
stead.  Andrew  gathered  together  money  and  troops,  and  then 
employed  them  against  his  brother,  whose  authority  roused 
his  jealous  ambition.  The  interference  of  pope  Innocent  III. 
obliged  him  to  content  himself  with  the  government  of  Dalmatia 
and  Croatia ;  and  even  there  he  was  not  able  to  keep  Zadar, 
which  was  again  taken  by  the  Venetians,  with  the  help  of  the 
crusaders,  in  1203.  Emerich  died  in  1204,  and  his  young  son 
Ladislas  reigning  but  one  year,  in  1205  Andrew  mounted  the 
throne  which  had  been  so  long  the  object  of  his  desires.  The 
beginning  of  his  reign  was  not  fortunate.  He  had  married 
Gertrude  of  Meran,  who  sent  for  her  brother  Berthold,  a 
bishop  of  scandalous  life,  and  procured  for  him  the  bishopric  of 
Kalocsa.  Berthold  and  his  sister  surrounded  themselves  with 
favourites  of  infamous  character.  Not  content  with  the  see  of 
Kalocsa,  the  foreign  bishop  heaped  upon  himself  all  manner 
of  dignities.  Ban  of  Slavonia  and  voievode  of  Transylvania, 
he  behaved  as  if  he  were  the  equal  of  the  primate.  The  public 
indignation  against  him  reached  its  height  when  it  became 
known  that  he  had  attempted  to  seduce  the  palatine's  wife. 
The  people  rose  against  him  ;  Berthold  was  able  to  escape  from 
the  kingdom,  but  queen  Gertrude  was  slain,  together  with  some 
of  her  favourites.  And  yet  it  was  this  queen,  so  justly  unpopular, 
who  gave  birth  to  the  pious  princess  Elizabeth  of  Hungary, 
who  married  in  12.21  the  landgrave  of  Thuringia,  and  has 
become  one  of  the  saintly  heroines  of  Christianity. 

Andrew  was  in  Galicia  when  these  tragic  events  happened ; 
he  was  vainly  attempting  to  force  upon  this  "orthodox" 
Russian  province  the  sovereignty  of  his  house  and  union  with 
the  Roman  Church.     His  grief  for  the  loss  of  his  wife  cannot 


8o  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

have  been  very  great,  for  soon  afterwards  he  married  Yo- 
hmde  of  Courtenay,  who  was  related  to  the  Latin  emperors 
of  Constantinople.  Perhaps  he  hoped  one  day  himself  to 
become  emperor  at  Byzantium,  but  meantime  it  was  needful 
for  him  to  make  himself  of  importance  to  the  Latin  world,  and 
to  take  upon  himself  the  character  of  defender  of  the  Christian 
religion.  He  decided  to  join  the  crusade,  and  an  expedition 
was  to  set  out  from  Spalato,  but  ships  were  wanting.  Venice 
consented  to  lend  some,  but,  true  to  her  motto,  ^^  Siam  Vene- 
ziani,  poi  Cristiani"  (Venetians  first,  and  Christians  second), 
she  insisted  upon  the  cession  of  Zadar  to  her  for  ever,  besides 
forcing  Andrew  to  pay  considerable  sums  of  money;  so  that 
he  was  obliged  to  pledge  the  very  treasures  of  the  Church.  He 
set  out  in  the  month  of  August,  1217  ;  but  his  health  failing 
on  the  expedition,  he  returned  to  his  country  without  having 
added  to  his  reputation.  On  his  return  he  made  large  grants 
of  property  in  Hungary  to  the  knights  hospitalers.  The  only 
important  results  of  his  expedition  were  the  alliances  he  formed 
with  the  Christian  princes.  His  eldest  son,  Bela,  married  the 
daughter  of  the  emperor  Lascaris  ;  his  younger  son,  the  daughter 
of  king  Leo  of  Armenia;  and  his  daughter,  Asen,  king  of 
Bulgaria. 

On  his  return,  he  found  Hungary  in  the  greatest  disorder. 
The  royal  authority  had  been  much  diminished  since  the  days 
of  Koloman ;  a  feudal  oligarchy  had  grown  up,  and  the  clergy 
had  possessed  themselves  of  secular  estates.  The  hereditary 
right  of  the  family  of  Arpad  to  the  crown  was  still  contested, 
nor  was  the  law  of  primogeniture  accepted  within  the  family 
itself.  We  have  already  seen  formidable  rivals  disputing  the 
throne  in  several  of  the  reigns.  The  support  of  the  great 
territorial  lords,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  had  become  of  great 
importance  to  the  sovereign,  and  to  obtain  it  he  had  gradually 
deprived  himself  of  his  domains,  to  divide  them  among  a 
powerful  and  greedy  minority  of  his  subjects.  The  smaller 
landholders  were  neglected,  and  diets  met  less  frequently. 
The  great  dignitaries  of  the  Church,  enriched  by  the  royal 


THE   GOLDEN  BULL.  8 1 

bounty,  had  become  a  state  within  the  state,  and  reh'ed  upon 
the  pope  for  aid  to  resist  the  royal  commands.  The  Holy 
See,  faithful  to  the  traditions  of  Gregory  VII.,  endeavoured 
to  exercise  within  the  kingdom  an  authority  equal,  if  not 
superior,  to  that  of  the  king.  The  clergy  were  scandalously 
corrupt.  The  state  of  the  whole  kingdom  called  for  prompt 
remedies ;  but,  far  from  daring  to  carry  out  energetic  measures, 
Andrew  yielded  continually  to  the  torrent  which  had  borne 
before  it  each  one  of  his  predecessors,  and  in  12 19  he  issued 
an  edict  making  all  gifts  and  honours  granted  by  previous  kings 
irrevocable  and  hereditary.  The  result  of  such  a  measure 
would  have  been  to  create  a  complete  oligarchy,  on  which 
thenceforth  both  king  and  populace  would  have  been  depen- 
dent. The  discontent  to  which  it  gave  rise  led  to  the  meeting 
of  a  diet  in  1222  and  the  enactment  of  the  law  known  as  the 
Golden  Bull — the  Magna  Charta  of  Hungary.  In  it  Andrew 
II.,  calling  himself  hereditary  king  of  Hungary,  Dalmatia, 
Croatia,  Servia,  Galicia,  and  Lodomeria,  solemnly  enumerates 
the  privileges  of  the  people,  or  rather  of  the  small  landowners. 
He  promises  to  hold  a  solemn  diet  each  year  in  the  town  of 
Szekes  Fejervar  (Stuhl  Weissenburg) ;  to  imprison  no  noble 
until  he  had  been  regularly  tried  and  sentenced ;  to  raise  no 
tax  on  the  lands  of  either  noble  or  priest;  to  summon  no 
noble  to  accompany  the  king  at  his  own  expense  beyond  the 
frontiers  of  the  kingdom  ;  to  allow  no  suit  which  involved 
the  loss  of  life  or  property  to  a  noble  to  be  tried  by  the 
palatine  without  the  knowledge  of  the  king ;  to  indemnify 
the  families  of  those  nobles  who  lost  any  relations  in  the 
wars ;  to  admit  no  guests  or  colonists  on  the  soil  of  Hungary 
to  any  dignity  whatsoever  without  the  consent  of  the  diet  ;  no 
longer  to  make  hereditary  the  grants  of  comitats  or  offices ; 
to  allow  tithes  to  be  paid  in  kind  and  not  in  money ;  and  to 
grant  land  to  no  foreigner.  The  Golden  Bull  contained  thirty- 
one  articles,  of  which  these  are  the  chief,  while  the  last  or- 
dained that  seven  copies  should  be  made  of  it,  and  sent  to 
the  pope,  the  knights  hospitalers,  to  the  Temple,  to  the  king. 


82  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

to  the  chapter-house  at  Gran,  to  the  chapter-house  at  Kalocsa, 
and  to  the  palatine,  who  was  to  see  that  the  charter  was 
observed  by  the  king  and  nobles.  If  the  king  should  attempt 
to  violate  it,  "  the  bishops  and  nobles  of  the  kingdom  have 
the  right  to  remonstrate,  and  to  resist  the  sovereign,  sine  noia 
alicujus  infidelitatis"  i.e.  without  by  so  doing  laying  themselves 
open  to  an  accusation  of  high  treason. 

This  last  article  was  to  play  an  important  part  in  the 
history  of  Hungary,  as  to  it  are  due  many  of  those  rebellions 
which  give  so  revolutionary  a  character  to  the  history  of  a 
country  essentially  conservative.  The  same  principle  is  to 
be  found  later  on  in  the  "  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man." 

The  constitution  of  Andrew  II.  is  far  from  fulfilling  the 
ideal  of  modern  times.  It  was,  nevertheless,  a  great  advance 
on  former  ones,  and  maintained  the  unity  of  Hungary  by 
preventing  hereditary  succession  to  office  and  the  consequent 
division  of  the  country  into  a  number  of  principalities.  It 
secured  to  the  nation — that  is  to  say,  to  the  nobles — the  right 
of  criticising  the  administration,  and  it  obliged  the  king  to 
respect  the  national  rights  by  placing  all  his  actions  under  the 
control  of  the  palatine.  The  part  assigned  to  the  palatine  is 
an  anticipation  of  the  ministerial  responsibility  of  our  own 
times.     He  is  indeed  a  prime  minister. 

Soon  after  the  promulgation  of  the  Golden  Bull,  a  special 
charter  was  granted  to  the  Saxons  of  Transylvania,  securing 
their  privileges.  Their  political  and  religious  autonomy  was 
confirmed  ;  they  were  to  be  subject  to  no  authority  except 
that  of  a  court  chosen  by  the  king.  In  return  they  were  to 
furnish  him  with  five  hundred  armed  men  in  case  of  a  defen- 
sive war,  one  hundred  for  foreign  expeditions.  The  Golden 
Bull  was  again  solemnly  confirmed  in  1231,  when  some  new 
clauses  were  added  to  it,  which  enacted  that  the  bishops  were 
to  be  present  at  the  yearly  diet  at  Szekes  Fejervar  (Stuhl 
Weissenburg) ;  that  if  the  palatine  ruled  badly,  the  states  were 
to  choose  one  more  worthy  ;  and  also  that  no  Jew  or  Mussul- 
man was  to  receive  government  employment. 


STRUGGLES  AGAINST  THE  MONGOLS.  83 

Struggles  against  the  Mongols  (1239-1241)  and  the  House  of 
Aicstria — The  Last  Kings  of  the  Race  of  Arpad  (1235-1301). 

The  reign  of  Andrew  II.  has  become  memorable  in  the 
history  of  Hungary  owing  to  the  Golden  Bull;  apart  from 
that  it  was  not  fortunate.  Like  king  John  of  England,  his 
name  is  associated  with  a  legislative  document  of  the  highest 
importance,  but,  like  him,  he  has  left  behind  a  reputation  for 
feebleness  and  want  of  character.  His  son,  Bela  IV.,  began 
his  reign  (1235)  under  the  best  auspices.  He  withstood  his 
enemies  both  from  within  and  without,  amongst  them  the 
emperor  Frederick  IL,  who  had  put  forward  a  claim  to  tribute 
from  Hungary.  Unfortunately  he  soon  had  to  deal  with  a 
more  pitiless  enemy  than  the  Germans.  The  Tartar  or 
Mongol  khan  Batou,  followed  by  a  formidable  army,  forced 
his  way  through  the  defiles  of  the  Carpathians,  and  invaded 
the  valley  of  the  Tisza.  The  Mongols  belonged  to  the  same 
race  as  the  Magyars,  but  the  Magyars  had  become  Christian 
and  European.  These  pagan  Mongols  attacked  Europe  with 
a  fanaticism  which  can  be  compared  only  with  that  of  the 
Saracens  ;  but  while  the  Mussulmans  founded  new  states,  and 
had  in  fact  attained  to  a  high  degree  of  civilization,  these 
Mongols  were  nothing  but  destroyers.  They  were  intrepid 
horsemen,  and  brought  with  them  fire-arms,  of  which  they  had 
learnt  the  secret  from  the  Chinese,  as  well  as  destructive 
besieging  engines,  while  their  dauntless  courage  was  aided  by 
inflexible  discipline. 

The  alarm  at  their  approach  was  great  throughout  the 
land.  The  bloody  sword  was  sent  from  town  to  town,  from 
castle  to  castle.  The  Cumans,  who  formed  the  vanguard  of 
national  resistance,  were  unable  to  withstand  the  overwhelming 
flood,  and  Vacz  (Waizen)  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  invaders. 
In  the  general  terror  the  Cumans  were  accused  of  treason,  and 
their  chief  and  the  leading  men  among  them  were  put  to 
death,  which  so  angered  the  tribe  that  they  passed  over  to  the 
side  of  the  Mongols.     The  royal  army  came  up  with  the  forces 


84  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  Baton  on  the  banks  of  the  Sajo,  a  tributary  of  the  Tisza,  and 
there  suffered  a  terrible  defeat  in  which,  according  to  some 
historians,  a  hundred  thousand,  according  to  others  sixty 
thousand,  men  perished.  Fe)'e  extinguitur  militia  regni  Hun- 
o-ariae,  writes  the  emperor  Frederick.  Hungary  as  far  as  the 
Danube  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  barbarians  ;  Pesth  was  taken  ; 
Varad  yielded  after  an  heroic  resistance  ;  Csanad  was  destroyed. 
The  Mongols  pushed  forward  as  far  as  Croatia,  where  the  Croats 
put  a  stop  to  their  further  progress  by  the  victory  of  Grobnik 
(1241).  After  many  adventures,  Bela  found  refuge  in  Austria, 
where  duke  Frederick,  to  whose  care  he  had  confided  his 
family  and  treasures,  took  shameful  advantage  of  his  misfor- 
tunes. In  exchange  for  the  hospitality  which  he  granted,  he 
oblio'ed  Bela  to  give  up  to  him  the  three  Hungarian  comitats 
which  lay  nearest  to  the  Austrian  states.  Bela  made  his 
escape  from  this  treacherous  neighbour  and  retired  to  Croatia. 
At  last  Christendom  was  aroused  ;  king  Vacslav  of  Bohemia 
called  upon  the  princes  to  come  to  the  aid  of  Hungary,  and  the 
pope  ordered  a  crusade  to  be  preached.  With  the  usual  dis- 
interestedness of  German  sovereigns,  the  emperor  offered  to 
save  Hungary  on  condition  that  he  should  receive  her  homage. 
Meantime,  winter  came  on,  and  by  freezing  the  rivers  became 
the  ally  of  the  invaders.  The  Mongols  crossed  the  Danube 
and  took  Gran,  putting  to  death  all  the  inhabitants ;  Szekes 
Fejervar  and  Nitra  (the  town  of  Svatopluk)  alone  resisted.  The 
Mongols  were  determined  to  get  possession  of  the  person  of 
the  king.  Bela  fled  into  Dalmatia,  first  to  Spljet,  then  to 
Trogir,  and  was  followed  closely  by  the  barbarians ;  but  they 
did  not  succeed  in  seizing  him,  the  Slavs  of  Dalmatia  and  the 
Italian  colonists  repulsing  them  in  furious  conflicts.  Beaten 
back,  they  next  penetrated  as  far  as  Ragusa,  and  would  have 
gone  still  further  had  not  their  chief  Kadan  received  orders  to 
retrace  his  steps.  The  Asiatic  hordes  returned  into  Asia,  and 
it  has  never  been  known  what  led  to  this  sudden  recall.  Per- 
haps Batou  had  received  tidings  of  the  death  of  the  great 
khan  Ogdai ;    perhaps,    finding   nothing  left   to    destroy,  the 


END   OF  THE  BABENBERGS.  85 

invaders  feared  they  might  die  of  hunger  in  the  midst  of  the 
ravaged  country.  The  most  horrible  cruelty  marked  the  last 
days  of  their  ephemeral  conquest. 

Slowly  Hungary  recovered  from  the  ruin  they  had  caused  ; 
colonists  from  Germany  filled  up  the  gaps  in  the  population, 
and  towns  were  rebuilt,  surrounded  by  stronger  fortifications, 
and  adorned  with  finer  buildings.  The  Magyar  nation  had 
not  attained  to  such  a  height  of  civilization  as  to  have  lost 
much  in  the  whirlwind. 

From  this  time  forward  they  had  another  enemy  to  struggle 
against,  one  perhaps  more  formidable,  certainly  more  persever- 
ing, in  the  house  of  Austria,  which  has  always  been  skilful  in 
taking  advantage  of  the  misfortunes  of  her  neighbours  to 
increase  her  own  patrimony.  We  have  already  seen  how  the 
unknightly  Frederick  had  taken  advantage  of  the  misery  of 
Hungary  to  get  possession  of  three  of  her  comitats.  As  soon 
as  he  was  free  from  the  Mongols,  Bela  set  to  work  to  recon- 
quer them.  He  marched  against  Frederick  and  defeated  him 
on  the  banks  of  the  Leitha,  where  Frederick  perished  in  the 
fight  (1246).  With  this  prince  the  house  of  Babenberg  came 
to  an  end.  Bohemia  and  Hungary  both  laid  claim  to  the 
inheritance,  and  though  Bela  was  unable  to  prevent  the  king 
of  Bohemia  from  gaining  possession  of  Austria,  he  succeeded 
in  establishing  his  own  son  Stephen  in  Styria.  War  broke  out 
between  the  two  kingdoms,  and  ended  in  favour  of  Bohemia. 
But  Premysl  Otokar  II.  proved  a  generous  foe  ;  he  would  not, 
according  to  his  own  expression,  "  by  enfeebling  the  great 
kingdom  of  Hungary,  once  more  open  to  the  Tartars  the  road 
to  the  two  kingdoms."  Later  on,  he  married  the  daughter  of 
the  king  of  Hungary  (1270). 

But  there  was  soon  to  appear  upon  the  scene  a  third  com- 
batant, who  knew  how  to  turn  to  his  own  advantage  the  rivalry 
of  the  two  kingdoms  ;  this  was  Rudolf  of  Habsburg.  Rudolf 
drew  Ladislas  IV.  into  alliance,  and  at  the  battle  of  Marchfeld, 
where  Premysl  Otokar  fell,  fifty-six  thousand  Hungarians  and 
Cumans  fought  by  the  side  of  Austria.     Thus  Hungary,  while 


86  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

she  ruined  Bohemia,  founded  the  power  of  Austria,  which  was 
so  soon  to  be  turned  against  herself.  In  his  letters  written  at 
this  time,  Rudolf  shows  the  greatest  tenderness  for  the  Hun- 
garians, "  My  beloved  sons,  bone  of  my  bone,  and  flesh  of  my 
flesh  ;  "  a  dozen  years  later,  as  emperor,  he  claimed  the  right  to 
dispose  of  the  crown  of  Hungary  as  its  suzerain. 

The  last  years  of  king  Bela  IV.  had  been  disturbed  by  the 
revolts  of  his  son  Stephen.  In  fact,  this  prince  was  the  real 
king,  and  it  was  to  him  that  the  envoys  of  the  duke  of  Anjou 
applied,  when  they  came  to  negotiate  the  marriages  which  were 
to  secure  Hungary  to  the  Angevin  house.  He  gained  little  by 
his  intrigues,  for  he  reigned  but  two  years,  during  which  a 
war  again  broke  out  between  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  and  was 
brought  to  an  end  without  any  advantage  to  either  side.  His 
young  son,  Ladislas,  succeeded  him  (1272),  a  foolish  and 
dissipated  prince  who  earned  the  hatred  of  his  people  by  his 
avowed  partiality  for  the  Cumans.  This  wandering  and  half- 
pagan  race  was  still  looked  upon  as  almost  foreigners  by  the 
rest  of  the  nation.  Ladislas  determined  to  convert  them  to 
Christianity  and  to  a  settled  mode  of  life,  and  assigned  to 
them  that  district  between  the  Danube  and  the  Theiss  (Tisza), 
which  is  called  to  this  day  Greater  and  Lesser  Cumania;  but 
for  some  time  yet  they  remained  barbarians.  Ladislas,  who 
betrayed  a  partiality  for  their  women  that  was  unworthy  of 
his  position,  was  assassinated  by  the  Cumans  in  1290.  He 
left  no  son,  but  he  had  adopted  the  grandson  of  Andrew  IL, 
and  this  prince  was  crowned  under  the  name  of  Andrew  III. 
Andrew  energetically  resisted  the  claims  of  the  Habsburgs 
and  of  the  Holy  See,  repulsed  the  invasion  of  Albert  of 
Austria,  and  laid  siege  to  Vienna.  The  court  of  Rome,  which 
was  favourable  to  the  Neapolitan  princes  of  the  house  of 
Anjou,  would  never  recognize  Andrew  III.,  and  during  his 
reign  Charles  Robert  of  Anjou  forced  his  way  into  Croatia, 
and  had  himself  crowned  at  Zagreb  (Agram)  by  the  papal 
legate.^  The  death  of  Andrew  in  1301  put  an  end  to  these 
rivalries.  He  was  the  last  prince  of  the  house  of  Arpad. 
'  See  infra,  p.  217. 


FMOGJiESS  OF  CIVILIZATION.  8/ 

Progress  of  Civilization. 

Hungary  is  still  grateful  to  those  monarchs  of  the  transition 
period  who  laid  down  the  lines  along  which  the  Magyar  race 
was  to  travel.  On  various  occasions  they  had  tried  to  extend 
their  rule  over  the  neighbouring  countries,  but  the  titles  of  king 
of  Servia,  of  Rama  (Bosnia),  of  Galicia  and  Lodomeria,  and  of 
Bulgaria,  had  never  represented  any  real  authority,  and  at  most 
recall  a  momentary  occupation  or  an  ephemeral  protection. 
The  only  important  acquisition  of  the  dynasty  of  Arpad  was 
the  voluntary  union  of  Croatia,  which  gave  Hungary  a  sea- 
board. We  have  already  described  how  Croatia  preserved  her 
autonomy.  Transylvania  also,  at  the  other  extremity  of  the 
kingdom,  had  her  own  peculiar  constitution.  The  Transylva- 
nian  diet  was  divided  into  three  nations^  the  Hungarians,  the 
Szeklers,  and  the  Saxons.  The  old  inhabitants  of  the  country, 
the  Wallachians,  who  had  been  conquered  by  the  Magyars  or  by 
the  Saxon  colonists,  were  only  peasants  and  counted  for  nothing. 
The  Szeklers,  who  were  all  freemen  and  noble,  formed  a  special 
body  of  horsemen,  to  whom  was  entrusted  the  defence  of  the 
frontier,  and  in  return  for  this  service  they  were  exempted 
from  taxation. 

We  have  seen  how  the  constitution  of  Andrew  H.  had 
placed. obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  increase  of  power  among  the 
oligarchical  aristocracy  and  territorial  lords,  and  had  aimed  at 
preventing  the  partition  of  the  kingdom.  The  lesser  nobles 
were  always  on  the  watch  to  maintain  their  own  privileges  and 
to  prevent  encroachments  on  the  part  of  the  great  lords.  About 
this  time  we  first  see  a  distinction  growing  up  between  mag- 
nates and  simple  deputies.  The  assemblies  of  the  comitats 
became  periodical,  and  formed  the  best  guarantees  of  public- 
liberty.  The  citizen  class  was  without  political  influence, 
and  was  largely  composed  of  foreigners,  Jews,  Germans,  and 
Italians.  Considerable  privileges  were  accorded  to  the  Jews, 
who  were  so  much  ill-treated  in  other  parts  of  Europe.  The 
less  aptitude  a  nation  has  for  commerce  the  more  it  feels  the 


88  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

need  of  attracting  this  race  of  clever  traders.     Amines  began  to 
be  cultivated  and  produced  wine  of  good  quality. 

The  Hungarian  nobles  gradually  imitated  the  nobles  of  the 
rest  of  Europe,  introducing  into  the  country  knightly  manners 
and  usages.  They  began  to  take  an  hereditary  name  from  their 
estates,  and  to  use  coats-of-arms,  and  trials  by  combat  became 
the  fashion. 

Those  arts  which  are  the  most  delicate  expression  of  civili- 
zation had  made  much  less  progress  in  Hungary  than  elsewhere. 
The  Gothic  style  of  architecture  had,  however,  penetrated  into 
the  country,  and  French  architects  were  employed  there  at  this 
time.  A  Frenchman,  Villard  de  Hannecourt,  built  the  Gothic 
church  at  Kassa  (Kaschau),  and  Mathias  of  Arras  the  cathedral 
of  Prague.  The  clergy  distinguished  themselves  rather  by  their 
courage  in  battle,  or  their  ardour  in  fighting  heresy,  than  by 
their  learning.  In  1279,  the  synod  of  Buda,  alarmed  doubdess 
at  the  progress  of  the  Patarine  heresy,  placed  a  limit  on  the 
knowledge  which  monks  were  to  be  allowed  to  acquire,  and 
forbade  them  to  study  in  foreign  schools.  The  most  important 
school  in  the  kingdom  was  the  studium  generale  at  Veszprim, 
which  conferred  no  degrees,  but  which  paid  for  its  best  scholars 
to  go  to  the  university  of  Paris.  Latin  was  universally  known 
and  studied  among  the  upper  classes,  but  at  the  same  time 
books  were  so  rare  that  a  complete  copy  of  the  Bible  cost  half 
a  village.  The  Magyar  tongue  tended  to  give  way  before 
Latin,  which  was  the  organ  of  the  Church  and  of  government ; 
it  was,  however,  still  used,  though  very  few  fragments  have 
come  down  to  us  from  these  primitive  times  :  only  a  funeral 
oration  and  a  legend  of  St.  Margaret. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

BOHEMIA   UNDER   THE    EARLIER    PREMYSLIDES, 

The  First  Christian  Pn'jices — St.  Adalbert. 

BoRivoj  was  the  first  Christian  prince  of  Bohemia,  and 
with  his  name  both  history  and  legend  associate  that  of  his 
wife,  St.  Ludmila.  He  built  the  first  Bohemian  church,  and 
dedicated  it  to  St.  Clement,  no  doubt  in  memory  of  the 
finding  of  the  rehcs  of  St.  Clement  by  the  apostles  Cyril  and 
Methodius.  His  son  Spytihnev  (894-912)  put  an  end  to  the 
connection  of  Bohemia  with  IMoravia,  and  went  to  Regensburg 
(Ratisbon)  to  ask  for  the  protection  of  Arnulf  and  the  empire, 
in  the  belief  that  by  so  doing  he  made  the  independence  of 
his  kingdom  more  secure.  In  consequence  of  this  step, 
Bohemia  was  attached  to  the  bishopric  of  Ratisbon,  and  the 
Latin  took  the  place  of  the  Slav  liturgy,  of  which  but  few  traces 
now  remain  in  the  country.  Vratislav  (912-925)  succeeded  his 
brother  Spytihnev.  He  married  a  Slav  princess,  Drahomira, 
daughter  of  a  prince  of  the  Lutices,  or  Lusatians,  who  were 
still  pagans.  Quarrels  arose  between  the  ambitious  Dra- 
homira, and  her  mother-in-law,  Ludmila,  and  in  921  Ludmila 
was  murdered.  She  and  her  grandson,  the  prince  or  voievode 
Vacslav  (925-934),  were  both  subsequently  canonized. 

At  this  period  Bohemia  was  far  from  being  a  united 
kingdom.  Like  France  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it  consisted  of 
a  number  of  small  states,  which  were  often  at  war  with  one 
another,  and  against  which  the  prince  of  Prague  had  occasion- 


90  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

ally  to  go  to  war.  The  members  of  the  ruling  families  obtained 
appanages  which  were  practically  independent,  and  the  rivalries 
which  resulted  proved  most  favourable  to  the  ambition  of 
Germany. 

In  928,  Henry  the  Fowler,  in  alliance  with  Arnulf  of 
Bavaria,  entered  Bohemia  and  obliged  St.  Vacslav  to  pay  him 
an  annual  tribute  of  five  hundred  pieces  of  gold,  and  one 
hundred  and  twenty  oxen.  It  was  St.  Vacslav  who  founded 
the  cathedral  of  St.  Vit  at  Prague.  He  was  assassinated  by 
his  brother  Boleslav,  who  was  the  prince  of  the  town  of  the 
same  name,  Boleslava  (Alt  Bunzlau). 

Legends  have  surrounded  the  name  of  St.  Vacslav  with 
a  halo  of  tender  memories.  Like  Robert  the  Pious  and  St. 
Louis,  he  has  become  the  typical  example  of  a  devout  and 
charitable  prince.  During  his  life,  as  well  as  after  his  death, 
he  was  able  to  work  miracles.  When  engaged  in  single 
combat  against  a  prince  of  the  Chekhs,  an  angel  from  heaven 
bore  him  company  and  terrified  his  adversary  by  the  wondrous 
sight  When  they  took  his  body  from  Boleslava  to  Prague, 
the  car  which  bore  it  crossed  by  itself  a  river  over  which  there 
was  no  bridge.  On  arriving  before  the  court  of  justice,  it 
stopped  suddenly  and  could  not  be  moved ;  it  was  discovered 
that  an  innocent  man  was  unjustly  imprisoned  in  the  building, 
and,  as  soon  as  he  was  set  at  liberty,  the  car  went  on.  The 
name  of  Vacslav,  under  its  Latin  form  of  Venceslas,  Wen- 
ceslaus,  or  the  German  form  Wenzel,^  became  popular  through- 
out Europe,  and  Bohemians  still  sing  the  old  canticle  of  the 
Middle  Ages  :  "  Svaty  Vacslave,  vevodo  ceske  zeme."  "  St. 
Vacslav,  voievode  of  the  land  of  the  Chekhs,  our  prince ' 
pray  for  us  to  God  ahd  the  Holy  Spirit,  kyrie  eleison."  His 
portrait  long  adorned  the  standards  and  the  coins  of  Bohemia. 

Some  historians  have  endeavoured  to  justify  the  crime  of 
Boleslav  by  reasons  of  patriotism ;  according  to  them,  he  only 
assassinated  his  brother  in  order  to  free  Bohemia  from  the 

'  The  Chekhs  are  often  called  by  this  name  by  the  Germans  {Das  ist 
ein  IVeiizel). 


BOLESLAV  II.  91 

suzerainty  of  Germany.  However  that  may  be,  as  soon  as  Bole- 
slav  became  king,  he  was  attacked  by  the  Germans,  and  two 
armies  entered  his  kingdom  by  way  of  Thuringia  and  Saxony 
(936)  The  war  lasted  long  with  little  advantage  to  either  side, 
till  at  last  (950)  Boleslav  was  obliged  to  submit  to  the  emperor 
Otto,  and  to  promise  to  pay  the  usual  tribute.  He  afterwards 
became  the  ally  of  Otto,  and  sent  a  thousand  Chekhs  to  help 
him  against  the  Magyars ;  he  himself  fought  against  them  suc- 
cessfully, and  took  possession  of  part  of  Moravia  and  the  land 
of  the  Slovaks,  while  his  conquests  on  the  banks  of  the  Vistula 
brought  him  in  close  neighbourhood  to  the  Poles.  The  Polish 
prince,  Mieczyslaw,  became  his  ally,  and  married  his  daughter 
Dubravka.  This  princess  converted  her  husband  to  Christianity, 
and  brought  Poland  into  the  bosom  of  the  Church  (966). 
After  having  done  somewhat  towards  lessening  the  power  of 
the  Chekh  princes,  Boleslav  died  in  967,  and  was  succeeded 
by  his  son  Boleslav  II.  (967-999). 

Boleslav  II.  continued  his  father's  conquests  towards  the 
East,  and  took  possession  of  Galicia,  but  that  province  was 
recovered  later  on  by  the  Russian  prince,  Vladimir  the  Great 
(981).  At  this  period  the  power  of  Bohemia  was  considerable, 
and  Boleslav  was  able  to  interfere  as  umpire  in  the  conflicts 
which  took  place  between  the  German  margraves  and  the 
duke  of  Poland.  He  obtained  permission  from  the  emperor 
and  the  bishop  of  Ratisbon  to  found  a  see  at  Prague,  to  be 
subject  to  the  archbishop  of  Mainz ;  the  bishop  to  be  chosen 
by  the  prince  and  the  people,  but  to  receive  investiture  from 
the  emperor.  The  first  bishop  was  a  Saxon  priest  called 
Thietmar,  and  his  successor  was  the  celebrated  Chekh  saint 
Vojtech,  better  known  under  the  name  of  St.  Adalbert,  one 
of  the  great  figures  in  the  religious  history  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

After  having  organized  the  Church  of  Bohemia,  St.  Adalbert 
was  invited  into  Hungary  by  Geiza  I.,  whose  son,  the  future 
king  St.  Stephen,  he  baptized ;  and  thus  Bohemia  was  the 
means  of  spreading  the  Christian  religion  in  all  the  neighbour- 


92  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

ing  lands.  Later  on,  he  gave  up  his  bishopric,  and  after  being 
for  a  time  the  confessor  of  Otto  III.,  he  travelled  into  Poland, 
whose  king,  Boleslaw  the  Brave,  sent  him  to  convert  the 
heathen  on  the  shores  of  the  Baltic.  In  these  distant  lands 
he  was  murdered  by  the  Prussians  (997).  Boleslaw  the  Brave 
caused  him  to  be  buried  in  the  church  at  Gniezno,  whither, 
three  years  later,  the  emperor  Otto  came  to  worship  at  his 
grave.  The  Poles  ascribe  to  him  the  first  of  their  rehgious 
songs,  the  most  ancient  monument  of  their  language,  the  hymn 
to  the  Virgin  beginning  "  Boga  rodzica."^  Prince  Boleslav  II. 
had  to  defend  his  country  from  the  attacks  of  the  Germans  and 
Poles,  but  was  able  to  maintain  his  position  against  them. 
Bohemia  also  suffered  in  his  reign  from  civil  wars,  which  are, 
however,  of  no  general  interest.  In  his  time  monasteries  were 
first  founded,  schools  arose  around  the  churches,  and  Latin 
civilization  spread  more  and  more  throughout  the  land. 

Bretislav  (1037-1055)  and  the  Institution  of  Pj-iinogetiiture — 
Vratislav  First  King  of  Bohemia  (1061-1092). 

Under  the  successors  of  Boleslav  IL,  Bohemia  fell  into  a 
state  of  deplorable  anarchy,  and  became  alternately  the  tool 
of  Germany  and  Poland.  A  powerful  sovereign,  Boleslaw  the 
Brave,  reigned  at  this  time  in  Poland,  and  he  obliged  Bohemia 
to  accept  as  her  ruler  a  Polish  prince  named  Vladivoj,  who, 
however,  afterwards  recognized  the  suzerainty  of  the  empire, 
and  acknowledged  himself  its  vassal.  Thereupon  Boleslaw  the 
Brave  (1002)  tried  to  conquer  Bohemia  for  himself;  he  did 
not  succeed,  but  it  was  not  until  after  the  death  of  this  for- 
midable neighbour  (1025)  that  Bohemia  could  once  more  take 
breath.  Almost  immediately  afterwards  she  was  attacked  by 
Stephen  of  Hungary,  but  her  independence  was  finally  secured 
by  Bretislav  (1037-1055),  whose  reign  proved  a  time  of  renewed 
vigour  for  Bohemia.  On  the  death  of  Boleslaw  the  Brave, 
Poland  was  left  without  a  ruler,  and  Bretislav  took  advantage 
of  this  to  conquer  Silesia  and  Lesser  Poland  and  to  take 
'  See  Morfill,  Slavonic  Literature,  p.  iSo. 


REIGN  OF  BRETISLAV.  93 

Cracow  by  assault.  He  next  entered  Greater  Poland,  and 
pushed  on  his  way  to  Gniezno,  where  was  the  tomb  of  the 
national  apostle,  St.  Adalbert.  The  Chekhs  took  possession  of 
his  remains,  and,  after  a  propitiatory  fast  of  three  days,  bore 
them  off  to  their  own  country.  The  emperor  Henry  H.  inter- 
fered to  stop  the  further  progress  of  Bretislav,  who  returned 
to  Prague,  bearing  with  him  in  his  triumphal  entry  the  trea- 
sures of  his  enemies  and  the  holy  body  of  the  martyr.  But 
when  the  emperor  proceeded  to  demand  from  him  the  restitu- 
tion of  all  his  Polish  conquests,  war  again  broke  out ;  the 
German  troops  were  given  possession  of  the  passes  by  treason, 
forced  their  way  into  the  kingdom,  and  obliged  Bretislav  to 
make  peace.  Of  all  his  conquests  he  was  only  able  to  retain  part 
of  Silesia,  with  the  see  of  Vratislav,  since  called  by  the  Germans 
Breslau,  and  in  1054  he  gave  up  this  district  to  the  Polish 
prince  Kazimir  for  the  annual  payment  of  thirty  pieces  of  gold 
and  five  hundred  pieces  of  silver.  He  was  accused  before  the 
pope  of  sacrilege,  for  having  carried  off  from  Gniezno  the  relics 
and  sacred  vessels,  but  obtained  absolution  on  condition  of 
founding  a  collegiate  church  in  the  town  of  Stara  Boleslava 
•(Alt  Bunzlav).  The  Poles,  however,  affirm  that  the  true  relics 
are  still  in  their  possession,  and  that  a  pious  fraud  had  substi- 
tuted for  the  bones  of  the  saint  those  of  some  other  person. 
However  that  may  be,  the  tomb  of  St.  Adalbert  is  the  object  of 
popular  devotion  both  at  Gniezno  and  at  Prague. 

Bretislav  had  five  sons.  Fearful  of  the  disputes  which  might 
arise  among  them,  he  ordained  that  henceforward  succession 
to  the  throne  should  be  determined  by  primogeniture,  while 
younger  sons  were  to  receive  dependent  appanages,  a  settlement 
known  as  the  seniorate.  This  wise  arrangement  was,  however, 
but  little  respected.  Spytihnev  H.,  the  successor  of  Bretislav, 
had  immediately  after  his  accession  to  fight  for  his  throne 
against  one  of  his  brothers,  who  was  prince  of  Moravia.  The 
reign  of  this  Spytihnev  was  of  little  importance.  He  drove 
out  of  Bohemia  some  Slav  monks  who  still  used  in  their 
monastery  the  liturgy  of  Cyril  and  Methodius,  and  he  thus 


94  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

secured  the  definite  triumph  of  Latin  Christianity  in  that 
country.     He  died  without  children  (1061). 

Vratislav  II.  (1061-1092)  was  the  first  king  of  Bohemia. 
He  divided  Moravia  between  his  two  brothers,  giving  to  the 
one  Olomouc  (Ohnutz),  and  to  the  other  Brno.  He  also 
founded  a  bishopric  at  Olomouc.  The  beginning  of  his  reign 
was  marked  by  an  incident  which  throws  some  light  on  the 
relations  then  existing  between  the  Germans  and  the  Chekhs. 
Even  at  this  remote  period  Germans  were  gradually  obtaining 
high  civil  and  ecclesiastical  office,  partly  owing  to  princely 
marriages,  which  had  drawn  Bohemia  closer  to  Germany,  partly 
to  ecclesiastical  organization,  which  included  this  country  in 
the  province  of  Ratisbon.  Since  the  foundation  of  the 
bishopric  of  Prague,  out  of  seventeen  bishops  who  had  obtained 
the  see,  seven  had  been  Germans.  We  must  not  forget  that 
national  differences  must  have  been  far  less  striking  at  a  time 
when  Latin  was  the  universal  language  of  educated  men,  but, 
nevertheless,  the  people  began  to  murmur,  and  grew  weary  of 
having  to  obey  foreigners.  Vratislav  found  this  out  when,  in 
1068,  lie  wished  to  nominate  as  bishop  of  Prague  a  German 
named  Lanzon.  The  nobles  and  military  chiefs  who  were 
assembled  round  his  camp  near  Nachod,  however,  demanded 
the  bishopric  for  the  prince  Jaromir,  who  in  the  end  succeeded 
in  obtaining  it,  though,  according  to  custom,  he  was  obliged  to 
go  to  Mainz  to  receive  investiture  from  the  archbishop. 

Vratislav  lent  the  aid  of  his  troops  to  the  emperor  Henry  IV. 
in  his  struggles  against  the  Saxons,  and  in  return  for  this  he 
obtained  possession  of  Lusatia,  a  Slav  district,  which  was  thus 
united  to  Bohemia.  Later  on,  he  again  helped  the  emperor 
in  his  expeditions  against  Italy,  three  hundred  Chekh  warriors 
taking  part  in  the  siege  of  Rome,  and  as  a  reward  for  this 
service  the  emperor  granted  him  the  title  of  king  (1086).  He 
also  gave  up  the  tribute  hitherto  paid  to  the  empire  by 
Bohemia  in  exchange  for  a  loan  of  four  thousand  marks  of 
silver.  Henceforward  Bohemia  was  only  bound  to  furnish  to 
the  emperor  three  hundred  armed  knights,  well  equipped,  for 


VRATISLAV,    FIRST  KING   OF  BOHEMIA.  95 

expeditions  into  Italy.  On  the  15th  of  June,  1086,  Vratislav 
and  his  wife  Svatova  were  solemnly  crowned  at  Prague,  in  the 
cathedral  of  St.  Vit,  by  the  archbishop  Egilbert.  Thus  was 
constituted  that  kingdom  of  Bohemia  which,  with  the  king- 
dom of  Hungary,  was  one  day  to  form  the  principal  part  of 
the  Austrian  empire.  In  order  to  understand  the  struggles  of 
modern  politics,  it  is  needful  to  recall  the  double  origin  of  the 
two  kingdoms,  the  one  founded  by  the  Holy  See,  the  other  by 
the  empire.  Hence  have  arisen  those  retrospective  claims  on 
Bohemia  which  Germany  has  since  put  forward.  The  title  of 
king  bestowed  on  Vratislav  was,  however,  purely  personal,  and 
was  not  transmitted  to  his  successors.  It  was,  perhaps,  in  ex- 
change for  the  crown  he  had  received  that  this  prince  granted 
certain  privileges  to  the  Germans  in  Bohemia. 

The  reigns  of  the  immediate  successors  of  Vratislav  offer 
but  few  points  of  interest.  Bretislav  II.  (1092-1 1 1 1)  abolished 
the  wise  law  which  had  established  primogeniture  in  the  family 
of  the  Premyslides.  He  even  asked  the  emperor  Henry  IV. 
to  grant  the  investiture  to  his  brother  Borivo'i,  and  by  so  doing 
recognized  the  imperial  right  to  treat  Bohemia  as  a  fief  of  the 
empire,  threw  her  provinces  into  their  old  state  of  anarchy, 
and  strengthened  the  claims  which  Germany  was  continually 
advancing  on  the  neighbouring  countries.  Hence  arose  a 
long  series  of  conflicts  between  the  princes  of  Prague,  Olomouc, 
and  Brno,  conflicts  during  which  'the  empire  took  occasion 
more  than  once  to  intefere,  selling  its  protection  to  one  or 
other  of  the  combatants.  It  was  during  these  troubles  that  the 
great  and  turbulent  family  of  the  Vrsovici,  whose  ambition  had 
so  often  troubled  the  land  and  made  its  princes  to  tremble, 
was  massacred  (1108).  We  will  pass  rapidly  over  this  time  of 
incessant  struggle,  which  has  but  little  interest  for  us,  and  during 
which  Germany,  Bohemia,  Moravia,  and  Poland  were  per- 
petually at  war  with  one  another,  and  the  emperor  claimed  the 
right  to  dispose  of  Bohemia  as  a  fief 

More  than  once  these  pretensions  met  with  energetic  resist- 
ance.    Thus  (11 25-1 148)  prince  Sobeslav  I.  did  not  hesitate 


96  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

to  declare  war  against  Lothar,  who  had  claimed  the  right  of 
giving  Bohemia  to  whom  he  -pleased,  and  had  bestowed  it  on 
prince  Otto  of  Olomouc.  Sobeslav  refused  to  appear  before 
the  tribunal  before  which  he  was  cited  by  the  emperor,  and 
replied  in  these  proud  words :  "My  hope  is  in  the  mercy  of 
God  and  in  the  help  of  St.  Vacslav  and  St.  Vojtech,  who  will 
not  see  this  country  delivered  into  the  hands  of  foreigners." 
The  Bohemians  all  rallied  round  the  standard  of  St.  Vacslav, 
and  the  emperor,  vanquished  at  Chlumec,  was  obliged  to  re- 
nounce his  claims  and  to  recognize  Sobeslav  as  prince  of 
Bohemia  (1126).  He  even  conferred  on  him  the  title  of  high 
cup-bearer  of  the  empire.  Later  on,  Sobeslav  became  the  ally 
of  Lothar  in  his  struggles  against  the  Hohenstaufen,  but  on  the 
death  of  Lothar  he  took  the  side  of  Conrad  IIL  of  Hohen- 
staufen. He  concluded  an  alliance  with  Leopold  IV.,  duke  of 
Austria,  to  whom  he  gave  his  daughter  in  marriage  (1138). 

During  the  reign  of  Sobeslav,  in  consequence  of  the  increase 
in  the  number  of  the  various  branches  of  the  Premyslide  family, 
Bohemia  and  Moravia  were  broken  up  into  a  large  number  of 
appanages,  which  led  to  internal  conflicts  and  revolts  that  had 
to  be  suppressed  by  the  prince  by  force  of  arms.  He  en- 
deavoured to  secure  the  crown  for  his  son,  and  to  this  end  had 
him  elected  by  the  diet  of  Sadzko.  But  immediately  after  his 
death  the  zhupans  offered  the  throne  to  his  nephew  Vladislav  IL, 
whom  they  believed  they  could  direct  as  they  wished.  Vladislav 
IL  (1140-1173)  did  not  fulfil  their  hopes,  and  had,  in  conse- 
quence, more  than  one  conspiracy  to  put  down.  The  Moravian 
princes  and  the  great  nobles  entered  into  an  alliance  against 
him,  raised  an  army,  and  obliged  him  to  ask  for  help  from  the 
emperor.  He  defeated  them,  forced  them  to  retreat  to  Moravia, 
and  took  from  them  the  principalities  of  Znoim,  Brno,  and 
Olomouc. 

During  his  reign,  a  papal  legate,  cardinal  Guido,  was  sent  to 
Bohemia  to  supervise  the  organization  of  the  Catholic  Church ; 
celibacy  was  imposed  upon  the  clergy  who  had  not  previously 
observed  such  a  rule ;  and  the  legate  reconciled  Vladislav  with 


VLADISLA  V  II.  97 

the  Moravian  princes,  obtaining  for  them  the  restitution  of  their 
estates,  Vladislav  was  the  first  Chekh  prince  who  went  on  the 
crusades.  He  left  the  government  in  the  hands  of  his  brother 
Diepolt  (1147),  ^^d  followed  the  emperor  Conrad  to  Jerusalem. 
This  crusade  had,  however,  but  little  success,  and  after  many 
Chekhs  had  perished,  Vladislav  returned  home  by  way  of 
Constantinople,  Kiev,  and  Cracow.  He  was  soon  after  at 
war  with  Frederick  Barbarossa.  Frederick  had  seized  Silesia, 
which  was  a  Bohemian  fief,  and  in  consequence  of  this  act  the 
prince  of  Bohemia  refused  the  three  hundred  armed  men  for 
the  expedition  against  Rome  that  Bohemia  was  bound  by  old 
treaties  to  furnish.  In  1156,  Silesia  was  restored  to  Bohemia, 
and  finally  Frederick  granted  Vladislav  the  title  of  king  for 
himself  and  his  successors.  As  the  seal  of  their  reconciliation, 
the  new  king  offered  his  aid  to  the  emperor  in  the  expedition 
he  was  about  to  undertake  against  Milan,  but  he  was  obliged 
to  raise  the  troops  at  his  own  expense,  as  the  diet  refused  to 
admit  his  right  to  levy  an  army  for  so  distant  and  useless  an 
expedition.  He  assembled  ten  thousand  men,  and  with  them 
crossed  the  Alps,  The  Chekhs  signalized  themselves  by  their 
bravery,  especially  at  the  siege  of  Milan,  and  there  is  still  to  be 
seen  in  the  cathedral  at  Prague  one  of  the  trophies  of  this  war. 
Later  on,  Vladislav  went  to  the  aid  of  the  king  of  Hungary, 
Stephen  HI.,  whose  two  daughters  his  sons  had  married.  Again 
the  diet  refused  to  grant  him  an  army,  but  he  set  out  with 
volunteers  and  fought  with  some  success  against  the  Eastern 
emperor.  These  victories,  which  spread  his  fame  abroad  in 
foreign  lands,  did  not,  however,  prevent  the  revolt  of  the  princes 
at  home,  and  the  emperor  Frederick,  with  but  little  gratitude 
for  old  services,  favoured  their  attempts.  In  1178,  Vladislav, 
weary  of  power,  abdicated  and  retired  to  a  convent.  Several 
rivals  contended  for  the  supreme  power,  and  they  were  all 
cited  to  appear  before  the  tribunal  of  Barbarossa  at  Nuremberg, 
the  emperor  claiming  the  right  of  deciding  the  succession 
at  the  same  time  that  he  suppressed  the  title  of  king  which 
he  had  previously  granted  to  Vladislav. 

H 


98  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

Again  Bohemia  fell  into  anarchy,  and  the  emperor  interfered 
continually  in  its  affairs.  Space  fails  us  to  give  any  details  of 
these  inglorious  struggles,  in  which  blood  was  shed  on  more 
than  one  field  of  battle,  and  in  which  even  ecclesiastics  took 
part.  We  find  the  bishop  of  Prague,  in  1187,  declaring  that 
his  position  as  prince  of  the  Holy  Empire  gave  him  the  right  to 
refuse  obedience  to  the  prince  of  Bohemia.  It  was  only  on 
the  accession  of  Premysl  Otokar  I.  (1197)  that  the  country 
began  once  more  to  breathe  freely. 

Premysl  Otokar  I.,  Hereditary  King  (i  197-1230) —  Vacslav  I. 
(1230-1253) — Invasion  of  the  Tartars  (1242). 

This  time  of  anarchy  proved  fatal  to  Bohemia.  The  quarrels 
among  the  princes  increased  the  power  of  the  nobles,  who 
believed  they  had  the  right  to  decide  the  election  to  the  throne, 
while  they  also  made  the  interference  of  the  empire  in  the  in- 
ternal affairs  of  the  nation  increasingly  easy.  The  great  lords  took 
advantage  of  the  opportunities  such  a  time  gave  them  to  oppress 
the  people  and  to  exact  from  them  heavy  taxes  and  enforced 
labour.  To  escape  from  these  exactions,  the  small  proprietors 
found  themselves  obliged  to  seek  the  protection  of  the  more 
powerful  lords,  and  this  enabled  the  nobles  to  form  bodies  of 
vassals  dependent  on  them.  Magnates  who  had  supported  the 
prince  at  the  time  of  his  election  claimed  a  right  to  be  repaid 
for  such  support  by  gifts  of  land.  Gradually,  by  these  means,  an 
hereditary  nobility  was  created,  whose  power  no  longer  depended 
on  the  office  they  held  in  the  household  or  army  of  the  prince, 
but  on  the  possession  of  large  estates  ;  and  the  owners  of  these 
large  estates  claimed  all  the  rights  of  sovereigns,  the  administra- 
tion of  justice,  the  levying  of  troops,  and  the  power  of  leading 
them  to  battle  under  standards  of  their  own.  This  hereditary 
great  nobility  begins  to  take  form  towards  the  end  of  the  twelfth 
century.  It  was  naturally  much  more  independent  of  the  prince 
than  an  aristocracy  of  officials,  and  its  assemblies  were  real  diets 
in  which  the  will  of  the  prince  was  discussed  and  controlled. 
As  early  as  the  twelfth  century  it  was  a  generally  admitted, 


CONDITION  OF  BOHEMIA.  99 

though  unwritten,  principle  that  the  prince  had  no  right,  except 
in  case  of  invasion,  to  summon  the  national  army  without  the 
consent  of  the  diet ;  and  laws  could  only  be  passed  with  its 
help.  It  was  only  under  extraordinary  circumstances  that  the 
king  might  levy  taxes,  as  he  possessed  large  estates  which  amply 
sufficed  for  his  own  requirements.  As  was  the  case  throughout 
Europe,  the  Church  had  acquired  considerable  influence.  There 
were  six  cathedral  chapters  in  Bohemia  and  nine  Benedictine 
monasteries,  besides  convents  belonging  to  the  Premonstraten- 
sians,  Cistercians,  and  Knights  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem.  Since 
the  time  of  Gregory  VII.  papal  legates  had  frequently  visited 
the  country.  Almost  all  the  peasants  were  serfs  of  the  soil, 
some  privileges  and  a  certain  amount  of  freedom  being  granted, 
however,  to  those  who  had  cleared  the  ground  of  forests.  There 
was  but  little  commerce,  and  what  there  was  had  fallen  mainly 
into  the  hands  of  Jews  and  foreigners,  especially  Germans. 
Ever  since  the  time  of  Vratislav  there  had  been  a  German 
colony  in  Prague,  and  this  colony  was  subject  to  a  special 
tribunal.  Germans  also  obtained  many  of  the  more  important 
positions  in  State  and  Church,  owing  to  the  close  relations 
which  were  continually  kept  up  with  the  empire,  the  princes 
usually  marrying  German  princesses  who  used  their  influence 
in  favour  of  their  countrymen.  We  often  find  the  heir  to  the 
throne  bearing  two  names,  one  Slav,  the  other  German,  such  as 
Premysl  Otokar,  Vladislav  Heinrich,  and  the  policy  of  such 
monarchs,  who  were  half  Slav  and  half  German,  was  dynastic 
rather  than  national. 

On  the  death  of  the  emperor  Henry  IV,  (1197)  Philip  of 
Swabia  was  elected  emperor,  but  his  rights  were  disputed  by 
Otto  of  Brunswick.  Premysl  took  the  side  of  Philip,  and  ob- 
tained important  advantages  for  his  country  in  exchange  for 
his  services.  The  emperor  undertook  to  interfere  no  more  in 
the  internal  affairs  of  Bohemia,  but  simply  to  confirm  her 
own  choice  of  a  prince  ;  he  restored  the  royal  title,  and  he 
renounced  all  right  to  the  investiture  of  the  bishop  of  Prague. 
Premysl  had  himself  solemnly  crowned,  and  in  1204  Innocent 


100  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

III.,  by  a  special  bull,  confirmed  the  royal  title  granted  to  the 
princes  of  Bohemia. 

The  friendship  of  the  emperor  and  the  new  king  lasted  but 
a  short  time.  It  was  soon  disturbed  by  a  war  which  ended  in 
a  treaty,  followed  by  the  betrothal  of  the  emperor's  daughter 
Cunegunda  to  the  heir  of  the  king  of  Bohemia  (1206). 
Later  on,  Premysl  lent  his  aid  to  Frederick  II.  to  ensure 
his  election  to  the  empire,  and  again  obtained  payment  for 
his  services  by  important  concessions  from  the  emperor.  The 
kings  of  Bohemia  were  no  longer  to  be  obliged  to  furnish 
three  hundred  men  for  expeditions  to  Rome,  this  tribute  being 
replaced  by  the  payment  of  three  hundred  marks  in  gold ; 
they  were  no  longer  to  be  required  to  attend  the  diets  of  the 
empire,  unless  they  were  held  in  towns  near  their  frontiers, 
such  as  Bamburg,  Nuremberg,  or  Merseburg,  Besides  this, 
Frederick  gave  Premysl  several  towns  in  Misnia  (Meissen) 
(12 16);  and  when  Premysl  caused  his  son  Vacslav  to  be 
elected  and  proclaimed  by  the  national  diet,  this  election  was 
immediately  recognized  by  the  emperor.  The  succession  to 
the  throne  by  the  law  of  primogeniture  in  the  direct  line  thus 
became  finally  the  law  of  the  kingdom.  Premysl  more  than 
once  used  his  power  with  an  energy  which  had  never  been 
shown  by  any  of  his  predecessors ;  on  the  death  of  Vladislav, 
margrave  of  Moravia,  he  assigned  that  province  as  an  ap- 
panage to  his  two  younger  sons,  and  in  his  own  lifetime  he 
had  his  son  Vacslav  crowned  king  of  Bohemia.  At  this 
coronation  was  omitted  for  the  first  time  the  ceremony  of 
showing  to  the  new  prince  the  sandals  and  wallet  of  the 
labourer  Premysl,  the  founder  of  the  dynasty ;  no  doubt  the 
Bohemians  were  ashamed  of  this  old  national  custom,  and  did 
not  care  to  make  use  of  it  before  the  foreign  princess.  But  the 
populace  saw  in  this  omission  an  irritating  sign  of  the  increasing 
ascendency  of  the  foreigner  in  their  land.  The  number  of 
Germans  in  the  capital  was  growing  rapidly  ;  while  in  the  pro- 
vinces they  had  colonized  certain  towns,  and  had  even  begun 
to  found  whole  villages  on  the  north-west  frontier  of  Bohemia. 


VACSLAV  THE   ONE-EYED.  1 01 

The  emperor  Frederick  had  chosen  the  daughter  of 
Premysl  Otokar  as  the  future  bride  of  his  first-born  son,  but, 
faithless  to  his  promise,  he  had  afterwards  affianced  him  to 
the  daughter  of  Leopold  II.  of  Austria.  This  led  to  another 
fruitless  war  between  Bohemia  and  Austria. 

Vacslav,  called  the  One-eyed,  peacefully  succeeded  his 
father  (1230-1253).  His  education  had  been  entirely  German, 
and  his  reign  proved  a  golden  age  for  the  Germans.  They 
obtained  leave  to  fortify  the  towns  they  dwelt  in,  and  at  this 
time  the  native  nobility  began  to  build  for  themselves  strong 
castles,  to  which  they  usually  gave  German  names,  such  as 
Steinberg,  Lichtenburg,  etc.  The  knightly  orders,  such  as  the 
Hospitalers  and  Templars,  also  established  "  commanderies " 
in  the  country,  while  the  Dominicans  and  begging  friars 
multiplied  greatly.  Luxury  increased,  and  knightly  habits  and 
customs  became  the  fashion.  King  Vacslav  was  one  of  the 
most  brilliant  sovereigns  in  Europe  ;  he  invited  minnesingers 
to  his  court,  and  himself  composed  love-songs  after  their 
fashion. 

His  reign,  however,  was  not  peaceful.  The  growing  enmity 
of  the  house  of  the  Premyslides  and  the  house  of  Austria  led 
to  continual  wars  between  them,  in  which  Bavaria  and  Hungary 
took  the  side  of  Bohemia.  They  ended,  however,  fortunately 
for  Vacslav.  Frederick  of  Austria  was  obliged  to  give  up  to 
him  some  of  his  lands  to  the  north  of  the  Danube,  and  the 
Austrian  princess  Gertrude,  the  heiress  of  the  duke  of  Austria, 
was  affianced  to  Vladislav,  the  heir-apparent  of  Bohemia. 
This  marriage  prepared  the  way  for  the  annexation  of  Austria 
and  Styria  to  the  crown  of  Bohemia. 

A  more  serious  event  was  the  invasion  of  Moravia  by  the 
Tartars,  or  Mongols.  We  have  already  seen  how  these  dreaded 
hordes  rushed  down  upon  Europe.  One  of  them  at  this  time 
invaded  Silesia,  and  the  whole  of  Christendom  took  fright. 
Pope  Gregory  IX.  caused  a  crusade  to  be  preached  against 
them,  but  the  quarrels  then  going  on  between  the  Holy  See 
and  the  empire  made  any  united  effort  impossible,  and  the 


102  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

threatened  lands  were  obliged  to  depend  upon  themselves  for 
their  defence.  King  Vacslav  manfully  withstood  the  storm, 
and  assembled  under  his  banner  forty  thousand  foot  soldiers 
and  SIX  thousand  horsemen.  The  enemy  had  already  pene- 
trated into  Moravia,  where  they  pillaged,  ravaged,  and  burnt 
towns,  castles,  and  monasteries.  The  inhabitants  fled  to  the 
woods.  The  fortified  towns  of  Olomouc  and  Brno  alone  resisted 
this  torrent  of  invaders,  who  overthrew  everything  in  their 
course.  The  Chekhs  met  the  Tartars  beneath  the  walls  of 
Olomouc,  where,  according  to  tradition,  they  were  commanded 
by  a  brave  leader  named  Jaroslav,  of  the  family  of  Sternberg. 
They  were  victorious,  and  the  Tartars,  either  in  consequence 
of  the  terror  inspired  by  this  defeat,  or  as  the  result  of  that 
capricious  restlessness  which  has  always  distinguished  Asiatic 
invaders,  suddenly  turned  aside  and  threw  themselves  upon 
Hungary  (1242).^ 

A  common  danger  had  drawn  the  houses  of  Austria  and 
Bohemia  together,  but  when  it  had  passed  their  alliance  came 
to  an  end.  Frederick  even  wished  to  give  up  the  marriage 
proposed  between  the  princess  Gertrude  and  prince  Vladislav, 
and  a  war  between  the  two  countries  was  needed  before  he 
could  be  induced  to  keep  his  word  (1246).  The  young  prince 
received  Moravia  as  a  marriage  gift  from  his  father,  this  province 
having  been  in  the  hands  of  the  king  since  the  year  1239  ;  and 
soon  afterwards,  on  the  death  of  Frederick,  the  last  of  the  Baben- 
bergs,  in  spite  of  the  emperor's  opposition,  he  obtained  posses- 
sion of  Austria  and  Styria.  But  Vladislav  himself  died  the 
following  year,  and  the  emperor  hastened  to  place  a  lieutenant 
of  his  own  over  these  two  provinces.  Vacslav  dared  not 
interfere  at  that  time,  as  his  own  throne  was  menaced  by 
dangerous  conspiracies.  The  greater  part  of  the  nobles  had 
been  irritated  by  his  amours,  his  excessive  prodigality,  and  his 
favouritism.  The  malcontents  insisted  that  Premysl  Otokar, 
the  son  of  Vacslav,  should  share  the  government  with  his 
father.  War  broke  out  between  the  father  and  son,  and 
'  See  p.  83. 


PREMYSL    OTOKAR   II.  IO3 

Vacslav  was  obliged  to  beg  for  assistance  from  the  German 
princes.  It  was  only  with  great  difficulty,  and  after  employing 
by  turns  force  and  cunning,  that  he  was  able  at  last  to  put 
down  this  insurrection,  which  had  so  inconveniently  disturbed 
his  wonted  life  of  love  and  the  chase. 

In  1 25 1,  the  states  of  Austria  invited  Premysl  Otokar  to 
become  their  ruler.  Bela,  king  of  Hungary,  in  alliance  with 
Daniel,  grand  prince  of  Galicia,  disputed  the  possession  of 
Styria  with  him ;  but  in  spite  of  this  Premysl  was  able  to  retain 
the  larger  part  of  his  new  territory.  Vacslav  the  One-eyed, 
who  had  rendered  his  son  no  assistance  whatever  in  these 
difficult  circumstances,  died  in  1253.  It  was  in  the  reign  of 
this  knightly  prince  that  Bohemia  adopted  the  arms  which  she 
bears  to  this  day,  a  crowned  lion  with  two  tails,  argent,  on  a 
field  gules. 

Premysl  Otokar  IT.  (1250-12 78) — Struggle  agabist  Rudolf  of 
Habsbiirg — Glory  and  Decay  of  Bohemia. 

On  his  accession  to  the  throne  of  Bohemia,  Premysl 
Otokar  II.  was  one  of  the  most  powerful  monarchs  of  Europe, 
Bohemia,  Moravia,  Upper  Lusatia,  and  Upper  and  Lower 
Austria  being  united  under  his  rule.  The  character  of  the  new 
king  was  equal  to  his  high  position.  He  had  apparently  done 
wrong  in  taking  up  arms  against  his  father,  but  the  conduct  of 
Vacslav  and  the  interests  of  the  kingdom  had  justified  his 
rebellion.  Just,  hard-working,  and  valiant  in  war,  he  was  both 
a  wise  ruler  and  an  able  leader.  National  historians  accuse 
him  of  having,  like  his  father  and  his  uncle,  too  much 
encouraged  foreign  manners  and  customs,  and  consequently 
of  having  helped  to  increase  the  influence  of  the  Germans  in 
Bohemia.  The  rhymed  chronicle  of  Dalemil  exclaims,  "  How 
sad  to  think  that  so  noble  a  king  should  not  have  remained  true 
to  his  native  tongue  !  What  glory  he  would  have  acquired,  and 
what  riches,  by  its  help  !  He  would  have  destroyed  all  his 
enemies."  Premysl  Otokar's  first  care  was  the  royal  domain, 
which  had  been  impoverished  and  dismembered  by  the  careless 


104  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

liberality  of  his  father  and  by  civil  war.  He  obliged  all  estates 
held  illegally  to  be  given  up  to  him,  and  built  fortresses  on  his 
lands,  which  he  placed  in  the  hands  of  royal  burgraves,  whose 
business  it  was  to  check  all  possible  risings  of  the  nobles,  and 
to  maintain  order  and  public  security.  He  increased  the 
number  of  German  colonies  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  and 
created  a  certain  number  of  royal  towns,  which  paid  taxes  directly 
to  the  king  and  had  the  right  of  self-government,  subject  only 
to  the  royal  control ;  some  of  these  even  observed  the  Mag- 
deburg code.  Some  of  the  forests  on  the  frontier,  moreover, 
were  reclaimed  by  German  colonists,  which  explains  the  pre- 
sence of  Germans  in  such  large  numbers  in  these  districts. 
Owing  to  these  measures,  the  riches  both  of  the  kingdom 
and  the  royal  domain  increased  considerably  during  the  reign 
of  Premysl  Otokar  II. ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  the  increasing 
number  of  foreigners  and  the  introduction  of  a  new  system 
of  law  prepared  the  way  for  numerous  disputes  in  the  future. 
No  prince  had  ever  ascended  the  throne  under  such  favourable 
circumstances.  Frederick  II.  had  just  died  in  Italy,  and  the 
long  interregnum  in  the  empire  had  begun,  during  which  the 
electors  offered  the  crown  to  the  highest  bidder.  Otokar  was 
either  the  relative  or  the  friend  of  almost  all  his  more  powerful 
neighbours.  In  Bavaria  alone  he  had  enemies,  who  envied  him 
the  possession  of  Upper  Austria,  while  the  king  of  Hungary, 
supported  by  the  princes  of  Cracow  and  Galicia,  was  the  only 
neighbour  he  need  dread.  Pope  Innocent  IV,  was  favourable 
to  him,  and  in  the  beginning  of  his  reign  invited  him  to 
undertake  a  crusade  against  the  pagan  Prussians  on  the  shores 
of  the  Baltic,  whom  the  Teutonic  Knights  had  not  yet  been 
able  either  to  conquer  or  to  convert.  Such  an  enterprise  had 
almost  a  national  interest  for  Bohemia,  for  it  was  in  these 
distant  lands  that  the  great  apostle  of  the  Chekhs,  St.  Vojtech, 
had  been  martyred.  Under  the  command  of  Premysl  Otokar 
and  the  margraves  of  Brandenburg  and  Misnia,  sixty  thousand 
men  marched  to  the  north  and  crossed  the  rivers  on  ice; 
they  made  their  way  into  the  country  of  the  pagans,  burned 


BATTLE   OF  CRESSENNBRUNN.  IO5 

the  sacred  trees  and  the  images  of  their  gods,  and  defeated  the 
Prussians,  of  whom  a  large  number  were  baptized.  Otokar 
founded  the  city  of  Kralovec  (Konigsburg)  in  the  conquered 
land.  Thus,  by  a  strange  freak  of  fortune,  a  king  of  Bohemia 
founded  in  a  pagan  land  the  town  where,  in  later  times,  the 
sovereigns  of  German  Prussia  were  to  be  crowned. 

These  exploits  spread  the  fame  of  Premysl  Otokar  through- 
out Europe,  and  in  1256  the  archbishop  of  Cologne  came  to 
Prague  to  offer  him  the  imperial  crown.  He  refused  it,  and 
the  electors  then  bestowed  it  on  Richard  of  Cornwall,  brother 
of  the  king  of  England,  a  prince  who  possessed  but  little  power, 
and  not  an  inch  of  land  in  Germany.  Premysl  Otokar,  how- 
ever, was  far  from  taking  no  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the 
neighbouring  lands.  Soon  after  this,  we  find  him  interfering 
in  favour  of  the  archbishop  of  Salzburg,  his  relative,  whom 
the  princes  of  Bavaria  wished  to  deprive  of  his  see.  This  act 
of  interference  brought  him  into  conflict  with  Hungary,  as 
Styria  took  advantage  of  it  to  free  herself  from  the  suzerainty 
of  Hungary,  and  Otokar  settled  one  of  his  lieutenants  at 
Gratz.  The  struggle  between  Bohemia  and  Hungary  began 
to  take  formidable  proportions,  for  we  find  that  Bela  IV, 
and  his  allies  set  on  foot  an  army  of  one  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  men,  a  considerable  number  for  those  times,  while 
Otokar  marched  against  them,  aided  by  the  margraves  of 
Brandenburg  and  Misnia  and  the  princes  of  Silesia  and 
Carniola. 

The  two  adversaries  met  in  the  plains  of  Austria,  on  the 
two  banks  of  the  Morava,  near  the  juncture  of  that  river  with 
the  Danube.  Neither  army  dared  cross  the  stream  to  begin 
the  attack.  According  to  the  knightly  custom  of  the  time, 
Otokar  sent  a  messenger  to  the  king  of  Hungary  to  demand 
either  that  he  should  cross  the  river,  or  that  he  should  allow 
the  army  of  the  Chekhs  to  cross,  in  order  that  the  battle 
should  begin  in  proper  form.  Bela  chose  to  cross  himself, 
and  Otokar  withdrew  his  troops  in  order  to  leave  him  a  clear 
field.     The  battle  took  place  near  the  village  of  Cressenn- 


Io6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

briinn.  The  heavy  Bohemian  cavalry,  clad  in  armour,  re- 
pulsed the  impetuous  attack  of  the  Hungarians,  the  Cumans 
fled,  and  Prince  Stephen,  heir  presumptive  to  the  crown  of 
Hungary,  was  seriously  wounded.  Soon  the  rout  of  the 
Hungarians  became  general ;  eighteen  thousand  men  were 
slain,  and  it  is  said  that  fourteen  thousand  were  drowned  in 
the  Morava.  The  Chekhs  pursued  the  enemy  as  far  as 
Poszony  (Presburg).  Bela  sued  for  peace,  abandoning  all 
claims  on  Styria,  and  shortly  after,  Richard  of  Cornwall 
granted  the  investiture  of  this  Austrian  province  to  Premysl 
Otokar. 

This  success  increased  the  fame  of  Otokar.  The  Tartars 
named  him  the  Iron  King,  because  of  the  heavily  armed 
knights  whom  he  led  to  war ;  the  Christian  princes  called 
him  the  Golden  King,  because  of  the  magnificence  of  his 
court.  But  this  mighty  monarch  had  no  heir.  He  therefore 
obtained  permission  from  the  pope  to  divorce  his  wife,  Margaret 
of  Austria,  widow  of  the  last  of  the  Babenbergs,  whom  he  had 
married  from  ambition,  and  sought  the  hand  of  the  princess 
Cunegunda,  daughter  of  the  Russian  prince,  Michael  Vsevolo- 
dovitch,  who  had  taken  refuge  in  Hungary  at  the  time  of  the 
Tartar  invasion.  She  was  grand-daughter  of  Bela,  and  this 
marriage  strengthened  the  alliance  which  had  been  concluded 
between  the  two  kingdoms.  It  was  celebrated  with  great 
pomp  on  that  plain  of  the  Morava  which  had  so  lately  been 
the  scene  of  the  struggle  between  their  armies. 

Soon  after  this,  a  successful  expedition  against  Bavaria, 
undertaken  on  behalf  of  the  archbishop  of  Salzburg,  enabled 
Bohemia  to  acquire  some  new  territories ;  amongst  ethers, 
Cheb  or  Eger,  where  Wallenstein  was  assassinated  in  later 
times.  Otokar  was  now  more  powerful  than  any  of  the 
German  princes,  and,  finding  himself  in  a  position  to  dictate 
to  them,  he  resolved  to  free  his  country  from  the  spiritual 
suzerainty  of  the  archbishopric  of  Maintz  and  to  create  an 
archbishopric  at  Olomouc ;  but  he  was  not  able  to  carry  out 
his  intention. 


RUDOLF  OF  HABSBVRG  ELECTED  EMPEROR.     10/ 

In  1269,  Ulric,  duke  of  Carinthia  and  Carniola,  dying  with- 
out children,  left  his  lands  to  the  king  of  Bohemia,  who  took 
possession  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  resistance  offered  by  the 
patriarch  of  Aquileia,  Philip,  and  the  king  of  Hungary,  Stephen 
V.  (1269).  The  kingdom  of  Bohemia  now  extended  from  the 
Riesengebirge  to  the  Adriatic. 

Soon  after  this,  war  broke  out  once  more  between  Bohemia 
and  Hungary,  during  which  the  Magyars  ravaged  Austria  and 
carried  off  sixteen  thousand  persons  into  captivity.  Otokar, 
in  return,  invaded  Hungary,  captured  Poszony  and  Nitra, 
crossed  the  Danube,  and  defied  the  Hungarians  on  the  banks 
of  the  Leitha.  Want  of  provisions  and  an  unexpected  attack 
from  duke  Henry  of  Bavaria  obliged  him,  however,  to  make 
peace.  Again,  in  1271,  the  archbishop  of  Cologne  came  in 
the  name  of  several  of  the  German  princes  to  offer  him  the 
imperial  crown,  and  again  Otokar  deemed  it  prudent  to  refuse. 
No  doubt  the  crown  of  St.  Vacslav,  though  it  might  be  less 
brilliant,  appeared  to  him  far  more  secure  than  that  of  the 
empire. 

This  was,  however,  a  fatal  resolution  for  Bohemia  and  her 
king,  as  Rudolf  of  Habsburg  was  elected  in  his  stead,  and 
Rudolf  soon  found  it  impossible  to  maintain  his  position  with 
dignity  while  so  powerful  a  rival  as  the  king  of  Bohemia  stood 
by  his  side.  The  election  had  taken  place  without  Otokar's  con- 
sent, and  in  defiance  of  his  rights  as  an  elector,  and  no  sooner 
did  he  hear  of  the  accession  of  the  new  sovereign,  than  he  hastily 
concluded  a  peace  with  Hungary,  against  which  country  he  had 
again  taken  up  arms  in  consequence  of  the  assassination  of  his 
father-in-law,  Bela.  He  protested  against  the  election  of  his  rival, 
and  appealed  to  the  pope,  Gregory  X. ;  but  in  1274  the  sovereign 
pontiff  recognized  the  new  emperor.  Rudolf  prepared  for  the 
struggle  with  his  formidable  adversary,  calling  to  his  aid  both 
the  power  of  the  law  and  of  arms.  He  persuaded  the  assembly 
of  princes,  in  a  meeting  held  at  Nuremberg,  to  decide  that  all 
fiefs  of  the  empire  which  had  become  vacant  since  the  excom- 
munication of  Frederick  H.  ought  to  belong  to  the  king  of  the 


Io8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

Romans,  and  that  every  vassal  who  should  not  receive  investi- 
ture in  the  space  of  a  year  and  a  day  should  forfeit  his  fiefs. 
This  was  to  demand  from  Otokar  all  that  he  had  inherited 
from  the  houses  of  Carinthia  and  Austria.  The  count  palatine 
Ludwig  cited  Otokar  to  appear  before  the  tribunal  of  the 
empire,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  not,  during  a  year  and  a 
day,  done  homage  for  his  dominions.  Besides  this,  Rudolf 
excited  the  subjects  of  Otokar  in  Austria,  Carinthia,  and 
Styria  to  revolt,  and  invited  the  archbishop  of  Salzburg  and 
the  bishop  of  Prague  to  assist  the  rebels,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  he  entered  into  a  secret  understanding  with  some  of 
those  nobles  in  Bohemia  who  could  not  forgive  the  king  for 
having  deprived  them  of  the  crown-lands  which  they  had 
unjustly  appropriated. 

All  the  enemies  of  Otokar  rallied  round  the  emperor,  but 
the  king  of  Bohemia  believed  himself  sufficiently  powerful  to 
hold  his  own  against  them.  He  subdued  the  revolts  in  Austria 
and  Styria,  and  even  invaded  the  domains  of  the  Church  in 
Salzburg.  Rudolf,  on  his  side,  prepared  for  the  war  by  enter- 
ing into  alliance  with  Frederick,  burgrave  of  Nuremburg, 
Menhardt,  the  count  of  Tyrol,  and  Ludwig  of  Bavaria. 

Humiliation  and  Death  of  Premysl  Otokar  II.  (1278). 

On  the  15th  of  May,  1275,  Otokar  was  placed  under  the 
ban  of  the  empire,  and  all  his  lands  and  offices  declared 
forfeited  if  within  a  year  he  should  not  give  in  his  submission. 
At  the  expiration  of  that  time  a  German  army  assembled  at 
Nuremberg,  ready  to  invade  Bohemia,  while  the  count  of 
Tyrol  prepared  to  attack  Carinthia  and  Styria.  The  duke  of 
Bavaria,  who  had  at  first  taken  the  side  of  Otokar,  also 
abandoned  him,  and  the  Hungarians,  gained  over  by  Rudolf, 
undertook  to  march  against  Austria  and  Moravia ;  blind  to 
their  own  interests  in  so  doing,  they  were  weakening  the  only 
state  which  stood  between  them  and  the  greed  of  Germany. 
Success  crowned  the  efforts  of  the  allies.  Carinthia  and 
Styria  fell  into  the  hands  of  Menhardt  of  Tyrol,  while  Rudolf, 


BOHEMIA   SUES  FOR  PEACE.  IO9 

suddenly  throwing  himself  upon  Austria,  captured  Vienna. 
This  town  had  been  devoted  to  Otokar,  but  yielded  before 
the  threat  of  Rudolf  to  tear  up  all  the  vines  which  had  been 
planted  round  the  city. 

Otokar  had  concentrated  his  army  on  the  frontiers  of 
Bavaria,  on  which  side  he  expected  the  enemy.  Surprised 
by  these  unforeseen  attacks,  he  now  made  a  forced  march  on 
Austria,  but  at  this  critical  moment  the  family  of  the  Vitkovici, 
one  of  the  most  powerful  in  his  kingdom,  whose  chief  then 
was  Zavisa  of  Falkenstein,  abandoned  the  cause  of  Premysl 
Otokar,  and  set  to  work  to  ravage  the  royal  domain.  It 
seemed  impossible  to  withstand  so  many  enemies  at  once ;  the 
army  of  Otokar  was  reduced  to  twenty  thousand  men,  while 
the  forces  of  his  adversary  were  far  more  considerable.  The 
king  of  Bohemia  found  himself  forced  to  sue  for  peace,  and  to 
gain  it,  he  was  obliged  to  sacrifice  to  Rudolf  those  countries 
which,  together  with  the  kingdoms  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia, 
were  in  time  to  form  the  larger  part  of  the  Austrian  empire, 
namely,  Carinthia,  Carniola,  Austria,  and  Styria,  together  with 
the  territory  of  Cheb  (Eger).  His  only  son,  Vacslav,  was  to 
marry  the  daughter  of  Rudolf,  and  Hartmann,  the  son  of 
Rudolf,  the  daughter  of  Otokar.  The  first  of  the  Habsburgs 
thus  entered  upon  that  "  policy  of  marriages "  which  was  one 
day  to  establish  the  fortunes  of  his  house ;  ^  and,  not  content 
with  having  impoverished  and  humiliated  the  king  of  Bohemia, 
he  secured  for  his  race  the  inheritance  of  the  crown  of  St. 
Vacslav,  in  case  of  the  extinction  of  that  of  the  Premyslides. 
Rudolf  gave  his  daughter  as  her  dowry  Lower  Austria  and 
forty  thousand  golden  ducats,  and  the  same  sum  of  money  to 
the  daughter  of  Otokar.  The  king  of  Hungary  was  a  third 
party  to  the  treaty,  and  Bohemia  was  forced  to  restore  all  the 
lands  she  had  taken  from  him  in  the  last  war. 

By  the  terms  of  this  treaty  Otokar  recognized  Rudolf  as 
emperor,    and   accepted   from   his   hands    investiture   for   the 

'  "  Bella  gerant  alii ;  tu,  felix  Austria,  nube  ; 
Quae  dat  Mars  aliis,  dat  tibi  regna  Veuus." 


1 1 0  inSTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGAR  Y. 

kingdom  of  Bohemia  and  the  landgraviate  of  Moravia.  As  it 
was  understood  by  the  king  of  Bohemia,  this  clause  neither 
interfered  with  the  independence  of  the  reahii  nor  with  its 
internal  government,  Rudolf,  however,  insisted  on  regarding 
Bohemia  as  an  integral  part  of  the  empire,  and  claimed  the 
right  to  interfere  in  those  disputes  which  arose  between  Otokar 
and  the  Bohemian  nobles  who  had  deserted  his  cause ;  in  a 
word,  he  meant  to  reduce  Bohemia  to  a  state  of  complete 
vassalage.  Otokar  resisted,  and  long  negotiations  were 
entered  into  by  the  two  kings,  but  they  came  to  nothing.  Two 
such  rivals  could  not  be  reconciled,  and  it  was  inevitable  that 
one  of  them  should  be  forced  to  submit  to  the  other.  Otokar 
had  but  a  small  army  of  thirty  thousand  men  with  which  to 
fight  the  empire^  and  no  other  allies  than  the  princes  of  Silesia. 
Nevertheless,  he  began  a  fresh  campaign,  and  during  the 
summer  of  1278  he  made  his  way  into  Lower  Austria  by  the 
Morava  and  reached  INIarchegg,  close  to  the  glorious  battle- 
field of  Cressennbriinn,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  stream.  Rudolf, 
who,  since  his  last  victories,  had  established  his  seat  of  govern- 
ment at  Vienna,  marched  to  meet  him,  and  soon  forced  him  to 
retreat,  and  on  the  26th  of  August,  1278,  a  battle  took  place 
between  them,  which  was  one  of  the  most  terrible  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  one  of  the  most  important  in  its  results. 

Rudolf  had  secured  the  alliance  of  the  king  of  Hungary, 
and  the  battle  began  with  a  furious  attack  on  the  flanks  of  the 
Bohemian  army  by  the  Cuman  horsemen  on  their  swift  steeds. 
The  two  kings  themselves  more  than  once  took  part  in  the 
fight.  The  fortunes  of  the  day  remained  for  some  time  doubt- 
ful, but  suddenly  the  rear-guard  of  the  Bohemian  army,  at  the 
moment  of  their  advance,  took  to  flight,  and  from  this  time 
the  day  was  lost.  Otokar  rushed  into  the  midst  of  his  enemies, 
and  gave  himself  up  as  prisoner,  but  he  was  slain  by  two 
Austrian  knights,  and  his  body,  stripped  of  its  armour,  was 
shamefully  outraged.  Rudolf,  who  arrived  too  late  to  save  his 
life,  caused  his  remains  to  be  gathered  together  and  carried  to 
Vienna,  where  they  were   clothed   in   the   royal  purple   and 


DEATH  OF  PREMYSL   OTOKAR  II.  Ill 

exposed  for  four  and  twenty  days.  The  court  of  Rome,  which 
was  one  of  the  many  allies  of  Rudolf,  had  placed  the  king  of 
Bohemia  under  an  interdict,  and  his  body  was  in  consequence 
refused  Christian  burial.  But  Bohemia  took  no  heed  of  the 
interdict.  Both  the  Church  and  the  nation  mourned  for  the 
sovereign  who,  notwithstanding  his  faults,  had  gained  so  much 
glory  for  his  kingdom.  There  were  some  who  regretted  him 
even  in  Germany.  "  Virtue  and  honour,"  says  Henry  of 
Heinburg,  "  weep  for  the  king  of  Bohemia  ;  his  hand  was 
liberal ;  he  was  the  rampart  of  Christendom  against  the 
Cumans  ;  he  was  a  lion  of  courage,  an  eagle  of  goodness." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE    LATER    PREMYSLIDES. 

The  Last  Premyslides —  Vdcslav  II.  King  of  Bohemia  and 
Poland  {12"] ^-i 2,°^) — Vacslav  III.  (1305-1306). 

Rudolf  did  not  lay  down  his  arms  on  the  death  of  the  king  of 
Bohemia,  but  at  the  head  of  his  victorious  army  he  made  his 
way  into  Moravia.  The  towns  here  were  mostly  inhabited  by 
German  colonists,  by  whom  he  was  gladly  welcomed,  but  he 
allowed  the  country  districts  to  be  horribly  ravaged,  and 
treated  the  whole  land  as  conquered  territory  and  a  fief  of  the 
empire.  To  some  of  the  towns  he  granted  important  privileges, 
making  Brno  (Briinn)  one  of  the  free  cities  of  the  empire.  The 
nobles  submitted,  and  Cunegunda,  the  widow  of  Otokar,  threw 
herself  and  her  son  on  the  mercy  of  the  conqueror.  In 
Bohemia  meanwhile  the  greatest  confusion  prevailed.  Those 
nobles  who  had  been  faithless  to  Otokar,  and  whom  he  had 
banished  from  the  kingdom,  returned  and  prepared  to  offer  the 
crown  to  Rudolf,  while  the  patriots  who  wished  to  maintain 
the  independence  of  their  country  made  ready  to  defend  it. 
Young  Vacslav,  the  heir  of  Otokar,  was  only  seven  years  of 
age.  Two  princes  were  eager  to  become  his  guardians — Henry 
of  Vratislav  (Breslau)  and  Otto,  margrave  of  Brandenburg;  the 
latter  was  nephew  of  the  late  king,  and  was  able  to  furnish 
some  troops  for  the  defence  of  Bohemia.  Meantime  Rudolf 
had  invaded  and  ravaged  the  country  as  far  as  Czaslaw  (Caslav) 
and  Kutna  Hora  (Kuttenberg),  and  the  Bohemian  nobles,  with 


A  US  TRIA  N  MA  RRIA  GES.  1 1 3 

an  army,  marched  to  Kolin,  on  the  Elbe,  to  await  his  coming, 
prepared  to  fight  for  their  independence.  Rudolf,  however, 
did  not  yet  feel  himself  sufficiently  strong  to  complete  the 
conquest  of  the  country,  and  therefore  determined  to  conclude 
such  a  treaty  as  should  leave  him  full  opportunity  for  doing  so 
in  the  future.  Accordingly  an  agreement  was  entered  into  by 
which  he  was  to  be  allowed  to  keep  Moravia  in  his  power  for 
five  years,  during  which  time  the  government  of  Bohemia  was 
to  be  left  in  the  hands  of  Otto  of  Brandenburg.  The  old 
arrangements  regarding  marriages  between  the  families  of  the 
Habsburgs  and  the  Premyslides  were  renewed  at  the  same 
time,  and  it  was  decided  that  Vacslav  should  marry  the 
princess  Guta,  who  was  the  daughter  of  Rudolf,  and  the 
emperor's  son,  Rudolf,  Aneska,  the  daughter  of  Otokar.  The 
oldest  of  these  children  who  were  thus  sacrificed  to  the  ambi- 
tion of  their  father  was  only  ten  years  of  age.  But  Rudolf  was 
not  satisfied  with  a  simple  promise;  he  insisted  that  these 
absurd  unions  should  receive  the  sanction  of  the  Church,  and 
the  double  marriage  was  celebrated  on  the  same  day  in  the 
town  of  Jihlava  (Iglau)  in  Moravia.  After  the  ceremony  the 
children  returned  to  the  care  of  their  parents,  that  their  educa- 
tion, which  had  scarcely  been  begun,  might  be  completed. 
The  queen-mother  of  Bohemia  and  the  new  regent  established 
themselves  at  Prague,  and  Rudolf  returned  to  Austria,  after 
having  confided  the  temporary  government  of  Moravia  to  the 
bishop  of  Olomouc,  who  had  formerly  been  one  of  the  devoted 
adherents  of  Otokar,  and  was  now  the  no  less  zealous  supporter 
of  his  successful  adversary. 

It  was  no  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  which  led  the  margrave 
of  Brandenburg  to  undertake  the  guardianship  of  his  young 
cousin.  No  sooner  was  he  settled  at  Prague,  than  he  set 
himself  industriously  to  work  to  plunder  the  country  which  he 
had  been  appointed  to  rule.  He  made  friends  with  the 
chief  members  of  the  German  colony,  seized  the  revenues,  and 
shut  up  the  queen-mother  and  her  son  in  a  castle  in  a  distant 
part  of  the  country.    He  even  sent  the  treasures  of  the  cathedral 

I 


114  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  Prague  to  Brandenburg.  Riots  soon  broke  out,  and  fights 
took  pkxce  between  the  Germans  and  the  Chekhs,  and  between 
the  royal  towns  and  the  nobles.  The  diet  of  the  kingdom 
tried  in  vain  to  obtain  the  freedom  of  the  king  and  his  mother. 
The  queen  managed  to  escape,  and  took  refuge  in  Moravia ; 
but  the  young  prince  remained  a  prisoner,  and  was  treated 
very  harshly.  At  last  the  Chekh  nobles  grew  tired  of  the 
insolence  of  Otto,  and  became  indignant  at  the  insults  inflicted 
on  the  heir  of  their  kings,  and  Otto  was  obliged  to  quit 
Bohemia  and  return  to  his  own  country.  He  carried  off  the 
young  prince,  however,  with  him,  and  left  the  government  in 
the  hands  of  Eberhardt,  bishop  of  Brandenburg.  An  insurrec- 
tion broke  out,  which  was  suppressed  by  bishop  Eberhardt, 
with  the  help  not  only  of  the  Germans  already  settled  in 
Bohemia,  but  of  adventurers  of  all  kinds  who  had  come  out  of 
Saxony  prepared  to  take  possession  of  the  country  as  their  prey, 
and  Bohemia  became  the  scene  of  the  most  furious  struggles. 
But  this  new  invasion  of  the  Germans  had  at  least  the  merit  of 
arousing  once  more  the  sentiment  of  nationality  among  the 
nobles,  who  had  hitherto  too  readily  submitted  to  the  attraction 
of  foreign  manners.  At  last  Rudolf,  who  had  for  some  time 
taken  but  little  interest  in  the  fate  of  his  son-in-law,  interfered ; 
he  began  to  see  that  if  Otto  were  to  get  rid  of  prince  Vacslav 
and  keep  Bohemia  for- himself,  the  hopes  with  which  he  had 
concluded  the  double  marriage  of  Jihlava  would  be  seriously 
endangered.  In  the  month  of  September,  1280,  he  entered 
Bohemia,  and  brought  about  a  truce  by  which  the  nobles  and 
the  representatives  of  the  towns  agreed  to  maintain  the  regency 
of  Otto  of  Brandenburg,  provided  that  he  would  not  leave  the 
government  in  the  hands  of  foreigners  during  his  frequent 
absences  from  the  country;  that  he  would  send  all  the  foreign 
troops  back  into  Brandenburg  ;  oblige  all  Germans  who  were 
not  settled  in  the  land-  to  leave  it  within  three  days  on  pain  of 
death ;  and  that,  on  the  payment  of  fifteen  thousand  marks  of 
gold,  he  would  bring  back  the  young  prince  Vacslav  to  his 
capital.     But,  notwithstanding  this  agreement,  Otto  managed  to 


ZA  VISA    OF  FALKENSTEIN.  1 1  5 

keep  Vacslav  in  his  power  for  three  years  longer,  badly  fed  and 
badly  clothed,  and  only  finally  agreed  to  give  him  up  to  his 
people  on  condition  of  their  paying  an  additional  ransom  of 
twenty  thousand  marks  of  gold,  or,  should  they  fail  to  produce 
the  sum  required,  the  surrender  of  a  certain  number  of  the 
most  important  strongholds  in  the  kingdom. 

At  last,  in  1283,  after  a  delay  of  five  years,  Vacslav  came 
out  of  prison  and  ascended  the  throne.  Rudolf,  true  to  his 
engagements,  gave  up  Moravia  to  him,  and  later  on  interfered 
to  prevent  the  payment  of  the  twenty  thousand  marks  which  the 
margrave  of  Brandenburg  tried  to  extort.  The  Bohemians  had 
looked  forward  with  impatience  to  the  accession  of  a  prince 
who  symbolized  to  them  the  awakening  of  the  spirit  of 
nationality  and  the  new  life  which  animated  the  kingdom. 
But  Vacslav  was  too  young  to  govern  alone,  and  his  mother, 
Cunegunda,  came  with  him  to  Prague.  During  her  exile  in 
Moravia  she  had  married  Zavisa  de  Falkenstein,  a  Chekh 
nobleman,  who  was  an  elegant  soldier  and  a  poet  of  some 
talent.  He  had  won  the  love  of  the  royal  widow  by  his 
brilliant  qualities,  and  obtained  great  influence  over  Vacslav. 
This  influence  continued  even  after  the  death  of  Cunegunda, 
and  enabled  him  to  enrich  himself  at  the  expense  of  the  state, 
while  he  encouraged  Vacslav  in  his  love  of  pleasure.  When 
the  young  queen  Guta  was  sent  to  Prague,  Rudolf  insisted  on 
his  removal  from  the  court,  and  Zavisa  was  forced  to  retire  to 
his  estates  on  the  confines  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia.  Still 
powerful  and  still  ambitious,  he  married  the  sister  of  Ladislas, 
king  of  Hungary,  and  was  accused  of  endeavouring  to  make 
his  lands  an  independent  principality.  Such  a  subject  was  too 
formidable  not  to  be  an  object  of  fear  to  the  king.  Vacslav 
invited  him  to  visit  him  at  Prague,  and  then  threw  him  into 
prison.  He  amused  himself  during  his  captivity  by  the  com- 
position of  songs  in  the  Bohemian  tongue,  which  have  now 
entirely  disappeared,  but  which  continued  popular  for  a  long 
time.  The  friends  of  the  prisoner  rose  in  arms,  and  help  was 
sent  to  them  by  the  king  of  Hungary,  while  Rudolf  interfered 


Il6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

also  and  furnished  troops  to  his  son-in-law.  The  rebels  held 
out  for  some  time,  and  it  was  necessary  to  besiege  them  one  by 
one  in  their  castles.  Rudolf  gave  Vacslav  one  piece  of  advice 
which  was  rather  politic  than  Christian,  when  he  suggested 
that  he  should  take  his  prisoner  Zavisa  on  all  his  expeditions, 
and  summon  each  burgrave  to  surrender,  telling  him  that,  in 
case  of  refusal,  the  head  of  Zavisa  would  be  cut  off.  This 
advice  was  followed,  and  several  of  the  rebels  submitted  in 
consequence.  At  last  the  king  arrived  before  the  castle  of 
Hluboka,  not  far  from  Budejovice  (Budweiss),  which  was 
commanded  by  Vitek,  the  brother  of  Zavisa.  The  dreadful 
summons  was  proclaimed,  but  Vitek  did  not  believe  the  threat 
of  the  king  and  would  not  yield,  whereupon  the  head  of  his 
brother  was  cut  off  before  his  eyes  in  front  of  the  castle  ditch. 
The  tragic  end  of  Zavisa,  his  brilliant  qualities,  and  his  poetic 
talents  have  secured  for  his  name  great  popularity,  which  has 
been  revived  in  the  present  century  by  those  interested  in  the 
national  literature.  At  this  time  Vacslav  was  nineteen.  This 
act  of  severity  startled  the  rebels,  and  thenceforward  the  royal 
authority  was  recognized  throughout  the  land. 

Vacslav  increased  the  revenues  of  the  crown,  and  worked 
on  a  large  scale  the  silver  mines  of  Bohemia,  which  were  then 
extremely  rich,  especially  that  of  Kutna  Hora,  "the  mountain 
of  mines."  He  kept  up  a  luxurious  court,  which  enriched  the 
town  of  Prague  and  made  it  the  favourite  abode  of  foreigners. 
That  city  became  in  his  day  the  seat  of  several  renowned 
schools. 

The  series  of  fortunate  events  which  placed  the  crown  of 
Poland  on  the  head  of  Vacslav  helped  to  make  him  one  of  the 
most  powerful  monarchs  of  Christendom. 

For  some  time  past  the  custom  of  creating  appanages  had 
seriously  weakened  Poland.  It  was  now  more  or  less  equally 
divided  among  all  the  princes  who  were  descended  from  the 
dynasty  of  the  Piasts ;  the  one  who  ruled  over  Lesser  Poland, 
and  whose  seat  of  government  was  at  Cracow,  being  the  over- 
lord.    His  power,  however,   had  become  almost  nominal,  for 


VACSLAV  II.   IN  POLAND.  11/ 

the  right  of  primogeniture  was  but  Uttle  respected,  and 
Mazovia,  Silesia,  and  Greater  Poland  had  each  in  turn  en- 
deavoured to  get  possession  of  Cracow  and  Lesser  Poland. 
Even  the  lesser  principalities  themselves  began  to  split  up,  and 
in  Silesia  alone  we  hear  of  no  less  than  ten  princes.  Some 
of  these  smaller  princes  endeavoured  to  strengthen  their 
position  by  foreign  alliances,  and  with  this  object  in  view  we 
find,  in  1288,  a  prince  of  Vratislav  (Breslau)  doing  homage  to 
the  emperor  for  his  principality.  In  the  following  year  another 
Silesian  prince,  Kazimir  of  Bytom,  placed  himself  under 
Vacslav,  and  in  1291  three  others  followed  his  example.  This 
event  was  soon  followed  by  the  formation  of  a  party  in  Cracow 
which,  taking  advantage  of  the  confusion  then  prevailing, 
offered  the  province  of  Lesser  Poland  to  the  Bohemian  king. 
Vacslav  accepted  the  offer,  proceeded  to  Cracow,  and  took 
possession  of  that  town  and  of  the  duchy  of  Sandomir.-^ 

Troubles  continued  to  increase,  and  a  few  years  later  the 
nobles  of  Greater  Poland  offered  their  province  also  to  Vacslav. 
He  caused  himself  to  be  crowned  at  Gniezno,  obliged  the 
princes  of  Mazovia  ^  to  I'ecognize  his  suzerainty,  and  thus 
united  the  kingdom  of  the  Piasts  to  that  of  the  Premyslides. 
This  union,  which  might  have  proved  so  advantageous  for  the 
two  countries,  was  unfortunately  of  very  short  duration,  and 
did  not  last  beyond  the  life  of  Vacslav.  The  time  had  not 
yet  come  for  the  Slav  nations  to  understand  the  duties  which 
their  common  origin  imposed  upon  them,  and  the  need  there 
was  for  common  action  against  the  Germans.  Only  a  short 
time  before,  Premysl  Otakar  had  invited  the  Poles  to  help  him 
in  his  struggles  against  the  insatiable  ambition  of  the  Germans, 
and  had  received  but  little  assistance.  In  years  to  come  the 
two  crowns  of  Bohemia  and  Poland  were  once  more  to  be 
united  on  the  same  head  ;  but  the  two  countries  were  never 
able  to  form  a  powerful  or  permanent  state. 

'   Sandomir  was  the  province  east  of  Cracovia  ;  its  chief  town,  Sandomir, 
is  on  the  Vistula,  about  midway  between  Cracow  and  Warsaw. 
*  The  duchy  of  Mazovia  was  north  of  Sandomiria. 


1 1 8  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGAR  Y. 

Another  crown  was  soon  offered  to  Vacslav.  The  race  of 
Arpad  had  become  extinct  in  1301,  and  although  the  pope, 
Boniface  VIII.,  had  chosen  Robert  of  Anjou  to  be  king  of 
Hungary,  some  of  the  nobles  revolted  against  the  papal 
pretensions,  and  offered  the  throne  to  Vacslav.  He  dared  not 
accept  it  for  himself,  but  he  suggested  to  the  Magyars  the 
choice  of  his  son  of  twelve  years  of  age,  who  was  accordingly 
crowned  at  Szekes  Fejervar  (Stuhl  Weissenburg)  in  1301. 
The  emperor  Albert  and  the  sovereign  pontiff  refused  to 
sanction  this  election,  and  entered  into  an  alliance  against 
Bohemia,  the  pope  persisting  in  recognizing  the  count  of 
Anjou  as  king  of  Hungary  and  offering  the  crown  of  Poland  to 
Wladislaw  Lokietek.  The  emperor  called  upon  Vacslav  to 
renounce  the  crown  which  he  had  accepted  without  the 
imperial  consent,  and  demanded  the  cession  of  the  province 
of  Misnia  and  the  country  of  Eger  (Cheb) ;  he  also  claimed 
the  payment  of  all  the  arrears  of  the  tenths  due  to  the  empire 
from  the  mines  of  Kutna  Hora  (1303).  Vacslav  was  not 
afraid  of  the  struggle.  He  quickly  assembled  an  army, 
marched  into  Hungary  as  far  as  Buda,  carried  off  the  young 
king,  together  with  the  crown  and  royal  insignia,  and  brought 
them  into  Bohemia,  and  then  made  ready  to  meet  the  imperial 
forces.  Albert  I.  entered  Bohemia  by  way  of  Budejovice,  and 
marched  upon  Kutna  Hora,  the  rich  mines  there  having 
especially  excited  his  greed.  But  this  town  defended  itself 
bravely,  and  when  the  emperor  saw  the  royal  troops  arrive  he 
quitted  Bohemia  in  haste.  Vacslav  was  preparing  to  invade 
Austria  in  his  turn,  when  he  died,  after  a  short  illness  (1305). 

Albert  hastily  concluded  a  peace  with  his  successor, 
Vacslav  III.,  on  terms  most  unfavourable  to  Bohemia,  as 
they  obliged  him  to  give  up  to  the  emperor  Misnia  and  the 
country  of  Cheb.  Albert,  on  his  side,  renounced  all  inter- 
ference in  the  disputes  between  Bohemia,  Hungary,  and 
Poland.  Vacslav  III.  was  a  frivolous  and  debauched  prince, 
who  knew  not  how  to  make  the  most  of  the  situation.  He 
gave  up   his  rights  to  the   crown   of  Hungary   to   his   friend 


ASSASSINATION  OF   VACSLAV  III  I19 

Otto  of  Bavaria,  and  allowed  Wladislaw  Lokietek  to  establish 
himself  on  the  throne  of  Poland,  though  when  he  was  remon- 
strated with  by  the  abbot  Conrad  of  Zbraslav,  one  of  his 
councillors,  he  took  up  arms  to  defend  his  rights  to  the  latter 
kingdom.  Upon  his  march  he  stopped  at  Olomouc,  and  there 
he  was  treacherously  assassinated  by  a  Thuringian  knight 
(1306).  The  man  was  immediately  slain  by  the  Bohemian 
courtiers,  and  died  without  naming  his  accomplices — without 
any  one  even  thinking  of  asking  him  if  he  had  any  accomplices. 
Rumour  said  that  he  had  been  employed  by  the  emperor 
Albert,  but,  in  the  entire  absence  of  documentary  evidence,  it 
would  be  rash  to  credit  this  assertion.  At  the  same  time, 
when  we  remember  the  plans  formed  by  the  emperor  Rudolf 
after  the  death  of  Otokar,  and  the  intrigues  which  followed  on 
the  death  of  Vacslav  III.,  it  is  difficult  not  to  apply  to  this 
murder  the  legal  maxim,  Is  fecit  cui  prodest.  The  patriot 
Dalimil,  in  spite  of  his  ambiguous  language,  allows  us  to  guess 
with  tolerable  ease  on  whom  his  suspicions  fell.  "  Ah  ! 
Thuringian,  evil  man,  what  hast  thou  done  ? "  wTites  the 
chronicler  poet.  "Was  it  perchance  after  the  manner  of  thy 
race  thus  to  slay  the  last  of  our  kings?  Rather  would  I  say 
.  .  .  But  let  us  leave  the  guilty  to  the  judgment  of  God."" 

Vacslav  left  no  son,  and  with  him  the  dynasty  of  the 
Premyslides,  who  had  reigned  over  Bohemia  since  mythical 
times,  became  extinct.  It  came  to  an  end  in  1306.  The  race 
of  Arpad  disappeared  in  1301.  There  is  something  curious  in 
this  coincidence. 

Bohania  under  the  Premyslides — Bohemia  and  the  Empire. 

The  death  of  the  last  of  the  Premyslides  marks  an  important 
date  in  the  history  of  Bohemia.  Up  to  this  time,  notwithstand- 
ing some  periods  of  anarchy,  the  country  had  recognized  the 
hereditary  authority  of  a  national  dynasty.  On  the  death  of 
Vacslav  without  heirs,  it  was  suddenly  left  to  itself,  an  easy  prey 
to  the  greed  of  its  neighbours,  and  from  this  time  we  rarely 
find  it  governed  by  a  national  king.     The  foreign  elements 


I20  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

which  had  been  allowed  to  settle  within  it  continued  to  increase 
in  power,  and  caused  complications,  disturbances,  and  even  at 
times  catastrophes,  which  would  have  completely  annihilated 
any  people  less  vigorous  than  the  Chekhs.  Before  we  turn  our 
attention  to  this  new  period,  it  will  not  be  without  interest  to 
look  back  and  to  study,  on  the  one  hand,  the  position  of  Bo- 
hemia in  its  international  relations  with  the  emperor  and 
empire;  on  the  other,  the  internal  condition  of  the  country  and 
the  development  of  its  civilization. 

The  neighbourhood  of  Germany  has  always  been  dangerous 
for  non-German  nations,  and  Bohemia  has  felt  this  more  than 
most  countries.  Since  the  time  when  Charles  the  Great,  with 
the  help  of  the  pope,  restored  the  empire  of  the  West,  the 
emperor  had  looked  upon  himself  as  the  temporal  head  of 
Christendom.  Even  those  states  which  had  no  immediate 
relations  with  him,  such  as  England  and  Spain,  admitted  this 
claim  in  theory,  "  Semper  Augustus^'  the  epithet  added  to  the 
title  of  emperor,  came  to  be  translated  "  Immer  Mehrer  dcs 
Reichs"  i.e.  "He  who  continually  increases  the  empire." 
Those  lands  which  the  emperor  did  not  attempt  to  conquer 
were  considered  as  owing  that  privilege  to  the  imperial 
generosity.  At  times  it  was  necessary  to  purchase  this  pri- 
vilege by  the  payment  of  tribute,  and  thus,  according  to  the 
somewhat  doubtful  testimony  of  Eginhard,  Bohemia  paid 
tribute  to  Charles  the  Great.  In  a  document  of  the  year  817, 
Louis  the  Pious  represents  Bohemia,  and  also  the  country  of 
the  Avars,  and  the  Slavs  to  the  west  of  Bavaria,  as  all  forming 
part  of  the  empire.  At  the  end  of  the  ninth  century,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  Bohemia  was  paying  to  the  emperor  a 
tribute  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  oxen  and  five  hundred  marks 
of  silver.  In  895,  the  two  princes,  Spytihnev  and  Vratislav, 
tired  of  the  authority  of  Svatopluk,  did  homage  for  their  states 
to  the  emperor.  In  928,  prince  Vacslav  I.  renewed  the  engage- 
ment to  pay  the  tribute  of  oxen  and  silver.  In  1081,  this  was 
changed  into  one  which  bound  Bohemia  to  furnish  three 
hundred  knights  to  accompany  the  emperor  to  Rome  for  his 


BOHEMIA'S  POSITION  TOWARDS   THE  EMPIRE.     121 

coronation.  At  the  same  time,  we  do  not  hear  of  the  princes 
of  Bohemia  doing  homage  or  claiming  investiture  at  the  acces- 
sion of  each  German  sovereign,  and  the  payment  of  tribute 
proves  nothing  more  than  that  there  was  an  international  treaty 
between  them.  Vassals,  indeed,  did  not  pay  tribute.  Louis 
the  Child  and  Henry  the  Fowler  paid  tribute  to  Hungary,  but 
they  were  not  the  vassals  of  Hungary ;  Poland  at  one  time 
paid  tribute  to  Bohemia  in  the  same  way,  but  she  was  not  her 
vassal.  The  emperor  never  exercised  any  right  of  sovereignty 
over  Bohemia  ;  he  never  levied  troops,  he  exercised  no  judicial 
authority,  nor  could  he  bind  Bohemia  by  the  treaties  which  he 
entered  into  with  the  court  of  Rome.  The  interference  of  the 
empire  in  the  disputes  of  the  princes  of  Bohemia  (as,  for 
example,  in  the  matter  of  inheritance)  was  exactly  the  same  in 
character  as  the  interference  of  the  Chekhs  themselves  in  the 
affairs  of  Poland  and  Hungary.  The  emperor  Lothar  failed  in 
his  attempts  to  impose  a  king  on  Bohemia  in  1126.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  a  Bohemian  prince  received 
the  honorary  title  of  cup-bearer  as  a  reward  for  services  rendered 
to  the  empire.  Later  on,  Otokar  I.  and  Vacslav  L  took  part 
in  the  election  of  the  emperor,  but  this  title  of  elector  was  a 
purely  personal  one,  and  involved  no  sort  of  obligation  on  the 
part  of  Bohemia  itself  Just  as,  at  the  present  time,  the 
sovereigns  of  Europe  exchange  orders  of  knighthood,  and  all 
the  members,  for  example,  of  the  order  of  the  Golden  Fleece 
"recognize  the  king  of  Spain  as  their  grand-master,  so  in  the 
same  way  the  acceptance  of  the  title  of  king  from  the  emperor 
implied,  according  to  the  notions  of  the  time,  no  sort  of  feudal 
obligation.  As  time  went  on,  the  German  emperors  took 
advantage  of  the  rivalries  and  quarrels  of  the  Bohemian 
princes,  just  as  the  Tartars  profited  by  the  anarchy  caused  in 
Russia  by  the  quarrels  of  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Rurik. 
They  tried  more  than  once  to  get  possession  of  certain  por- 
tions of  Bohemia,  such  as  the  bishopric  of  Prague  and  the 
margraviate  of  Moravia,  but  after  each  attempt  the  unity  of 
the  kingdom  was  quickly  restored.     When  once  the  pope  had 


122  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

given  his  sanction  to  the  adoption  of  the  royal  title,  any 
special  connection  between  the  prince  of  Bohemia  and  the 
emperor  resting  on  the  imperial  grant  must  have  disappeared. 
After  the  election  of  Rudolf,  Premysl  Otokar  II.  was  called 
upon  to  do  homage  for  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  and  we  have 
seen  to  what  a  struggle  this  claim  gave  rise.  Albert  I.,  in  his 
treaty  with  Vacslav,  renounced  this  claim,  but  we  shall  soon 
see  how  it  was  revived  during  the  time  of  anarchy  which 
followed  the  tragic  death  of  the  last  of  the  Premyslides. 

Thus  the  claim  of  the  empire  was  never  clearly  defined. 
The  power  and  individual  pretensions  of  each  sovereign 
differed,  and  history  can  only  state  the  facts  without  being  able 
to  lay  dow^n  any  definite  rule.  But,  at  the  same  time,  we  can 
understand  the  conclusions  arrived  at  by  Pan-Germanic  jurists 
who  dream  of  the  reconstruction  of  an  ideal  Holy  Empire. 

Bohcmiaji  Institutions — German  Colonies. 

The  doctrine  which  maintains  that  all  power  proceeds  from 
the  people  is  confirmed  by  the  history  of  Bohemia.  The  crown 
was  elective  before  it  became  hereditary,  and  the  prince  was 
assisted  by  a  diet  which  was  at  first  composed  of  the  chiefs  of 
tribes,  the  heads  of  families,  and  the  representatives  of  the  free 
cities.  Later  on,  the  earlier  Premyslides  convoked  diets  in 
which  we  find  the  princes  of  the  royal  family,  the  higher  clergy, 
twelve  judges  chosen  by  the  sovereign,  and  the  representatives 
of  the  nobles.  The  powers  of  this  diet  were  mainly  judicial  and 
deliberative  ;  by  it  the  prince,  who  could  only  be  chosen  from 
the  ruling  family,  was  elected ;  the  national  militia  was  called 
out ;  and  in  exceptional  cases  taxes  were  levied.  This  diet  also 
elected  the  bishop  of  Prague.  But  its  powers  were  never  very 
clearly  defined,  and  the  prince  often  governed  without  its  aid. 
From  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  the  power  of  the  diets  in- 
creased, and  we  often  find  them  refusing  their  permission  to 
the  sovereign  to  levy  troops  and  extraordinary  taxes.  The  diet 
was  also  the  highest  court  of  justice.  The  earliest  authentic 
documents  dealing  with  the  relations  between  the  prince  and 


EXTENT  OF  BOHEMIA.  1 23 

the  diet  bear  date  13 10.  The  nobiHty  was  at  first  formed 
of  the  chiefs  of  the  tribes,  and  later  on  of  officials  chosen  by 
the  prince,  but  the  whole  order  of  nobility  was  gradually 
modified  by  the  feudal  ideas  which  prevailed  in  Germany. 

The  territory  of  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia  during  this  period 
repeatedly  extended  beyond  the  present  limits  of  Bohemia  and 
Moravia.  At  various  periods  the  frontier  included  portions 
of  the  present  Saxony,  Poland,  Bavaria,  Austria,  Styria, 
Carinthia,  and  Carniola,  but  all  these  outlying  districts,  most 
of  which  were  occupied  by  inhabitants  not  belonging  to  the 
Chekh  race,  were  gradually  lost.  Their  loss  would  have  been 
of  but  slight  importance  if  the  Chekhs  had  been  a  strong  and 
united  nation  within  the  quadrilateral  formed  by  the  mountains 
of  Bohemia  and  Moravia.  Unfortunately  this  was  not  the 
case.  They  allowed  themselves  to  be  not  only  weakened 
externally,  but  also  internally,  by  the  constant  infiltration  of  a 
German  element,  which,  from  many  points  of  view,  was  far 
more  dangerous  than  ten  serious  defeats  in  the  field.  The 
time  came  when  Bohemia  had  to  struggle  not  only  with 
enemies  from  without,  but  also  with  enemies  from  within. 
The  Chekhs  had  found  Bohemia  deserted,  and  they  had 
occupied  only  the  centre  of  the  country  ;  the  Germans  had 
gradually  taken  possession  of  the  mountainous  districts  and  the 
frontiers,  which  had  at  first  remained  uncultivated  and  unin- 
habited. The  Christian  princes  of  Bohemia,  unhappily,  sought 
their  wives  among  the  Germans,  and  these  foreign  princesses 
brought  to  the  court  a  large  number  of  their  countrymen,  while 
a  great  many  German  priests  and  monks  found  their  way  into 
the  churches  and  monasteries.  German  merchants,  who  were 
allowed  to  settle  in  the  vicics  Teutonlconuii  in  Prague,  ended  by 
getting  possession  of  an  entire  district  of  the  town.  From 
the  twelfth  century  onward  whole  towns  and  villages  of 
Germans  were  to  be  found  along  the  frontiers,  where  the  soil 
had  been  lately  reclaimed,  and  many  royal  and  baronial  towns 
which  were  built  by  the  king,  nobles,  and  abbots,  were  occu- 
pied by  German  settlers.     The  celebrated  poets  of  Germany, 


124  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Ulric  of  Turlin,  Ulric  of  Eschenbach,  and  Henry  of  Freiburg, 
appeared  at  the  Bohemian  court,  and  renowned  soldiers  filled 
their  estates  with  Germans,  as  was  the  case,  for  example,  at 
Komotau.  A  popular  proverb  says,  "  There  are  men  every- 
where, but  there  are  Germans  at  Komotau."  The  mines  of 
Kutna  Hora  and  Nemecky  Brod  (the  "German  Ford")  also 
attracted  many  foreigners. 

The  Slav  agriculturists  gladly  left  all  tr'^de  and  commerce 
in  the  hands  of  foreigners;  in  Poland  the  Jews,  and  in  Bohemia 
the  Germans,  got  possession  of  it.  Some  far-seeing  patriots 
became  alarmed  at  the  growth  of  German  influence.  The 
Chekh  chronicle  of  Dalemil,  compiled  probably  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  expresses,  sometimes  in  very  outspoken  fashion, 
the  grief  and  anger  of  a  Slav  who  sees  his  native  tongue  and 
his  fatherland  threatened.  The  following  words  are  put  into 
the  mouth  of  the  princess  Libusa  : — "  If  a  foreigner  comes  to 
rule  you,  your  nation  will  not  last.  A  wise  man  does  not 
consult  foreigners.  A  foreigner  will  employ  the  people  of  his 
own  tongue  and  will  seek  to  do  you  evil.  He  will  divide  your 
inheritance  among  his  own  people.  Look  well  that  you  trust 
not  your  fortune  to  the  stranger,  O  Bohemian  chief !  There, 
where  but  one  language  is  spoken,  there  glory  is  to  be  found." 
But  these  warnings  of  some  unknown  patriot  were  to  remain 
without  any  echo  till  the  days  when  the  Hussites  unfurled  the 
standard  alike  of  religious  reform  and  of  national  unity. 

Religion — A  rts —  Cii  nlization . 

When  the  Catholic  Church  introduced  the  Roman  liturgy 
into  Bohemia,  she  did  much  to  clear  the  way  for  German 
influences.  Bohemia  had  been  Christianized  by  Moravia  and 
German}^  but,  in  consequence  of  the  destruction  of  the  arch- 
bishopric of  the  Moravians,  she  had  been  placed  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  Ratisbon,  and  remained  so  until  the  creation  of 
the  episcopal  see  of  Prague,  which  was  attached  to  the  arch- 
bishopric of  Mainz.  The  pope,  when  he  -made  Bohemia  into 
a  bishopric,  insisted  that  the  Roman  liturgy  alone  should  be 
employed.     The  bishop  was  usually  elected  by  the  diet  and 


RELIGION— A  RTS.  1 2  5 

the  prince  together;  after  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century 
he  was  chosen  by  the  chapter,  whose  choice  was  ratified  by  the 
prince.  Notwithstanding  the  papal  decrees,  the  Slav  liturgy 
continued  to  find  some  adherents.  In  1032,  prince  Oldric 
founded  the  monastery  of  Sazava,  in  which  it  was  used,  but 
the  Slav  monks  were  soon  exiled  into  Hungary  in  consequence 
of  the  protests  of  the  Latin  clergy.  They  were  recalled  in 
1068,  but  disappear  entirely  in  1096. 

Most  of  the  foreign  orders  flourished  in  Bohemia.  We 
find  Benedictines,  Premonstratensians,  Cistercians,  Johannites, 
Dominicans,  Franciscans,  Augustinians,  and  Carthusians.  The 
only  schools  in  the  country  belonged  to  them.  In  the  thir- 
teenth century  the  most  celebrated  school  was  the  Studium 
Generale  established  in  the  castle  at  Prague,  where  grammar 
and  logic  were  taught  by  eminent  masters.  The  clergy  pos- 
sessed considerable  influence,  and  Bohemia  remained  faithful 
to  Catholic  unity  down  to  the  fourteenth  century;  the  first 
heresies  make  their  appearance  in  the  beginning  of  that  century. 

Though  the  literature  of  that  time  was  but  little  developed, 
it  had  produced  some  works  of  interest.  The  Latin  tongue, 
so  dear  to  the  priests,  had  not  entirely  put  an  end  to  national 
culture.  Cosmos,  dean  of  the  chapter  of  Prague,  wrote  a 
chronicle  of  Bohemia  at  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century, 
which  now,  in  spite  of  the  pseudo-classical  style  of  the  author, 
is  extremely  valuable.  We  find  religious  hymns,  sacred  texts, 
lyric  and  heroic  poems  in  the  language  of  the  Chekhs — some 
describing  the  life  of  the  nation  and  of  great  poetic  value ; 
others,  imitations  of  Christian  or  romantic  legends  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  such  as  the  legends  of  St.  Catherine,  St.  Dorothy,  and 
Alexander  the  Great. 

Neither  were  the  fine  arts  neglected.  The  Church  inte- 
rested itself  in  their  development  and  employed  them  for 
religious  purposes.  At  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century,  Boze- 
tech,  abbot  of  the  Slav  monastery  of  Sazava,  is  spoken  of  as 
a  clever  painter  and  a  skilful  carver  in  wood  and  stone.  The 
chronicle  relates  how  the  bishop  of  Prague,  jealous  of  his 
powers,  imposed  upon  him  a  singular  penance ;  he  ordered 


126  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

him  to  carve  a  Christ  in  wood  of  the  size  of  hfe,  and  to  bear 
it  to  Rome  on  his  shoulders. 

The  two  styles  of  art,  the  Byzantine  and  the  Italian,  may 
be  said  to  have  met  in  Bohemia,  but  the  triumph  of  the 
Roman  Church  carried  with  it  that  of  Italian  art.  A  large 
number  of  churches  were  built  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries,  among  them  the  Roman  basilica  of  St.  Vit  at  Prague. 
About  one  hundred  and  fifty  churches  built  in  the  Roman 
style  are  known  to  exist  in  Bohemia.  Gothic  art  made  its 
appearance  there  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  reached  its 
highest  point  of  delicacy  in  the  fourteenth. 

We  have  already  seen  how  Prague  became  the  seat  of  a 
brilliant  and  knightly  court  under  the  last  Premsylides.  The 
coronation  of  Vacslav  II.,  in  1297,  was  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  ceremonies  of  the  Middle  Ages.  "  It  was,"  says  a 
German  chronicle,  '•'  such  a  festival  as  had  never  been  cele- 
brated, neither  by  a  king  of  Assyria,  nor  by  Solomon  himself" 
The  number  of  strangers  who  flocked  to  it  was  so  vast  that, 
according  to  contemporary  accounts,  food  had  to  be  found 
for  nineteen  thousand  horses.  There  came  to  it  not  less  than 
twenty-eight  princes,  lay  and  ecclesiastic  j  the  archbishops  of 
Mainz  and  Magdeburg,  the  bishops  of  Prague,  Olomouc, 
Cracow,  Basel,  and  Constance;  the  archduke  Albert  of 
Austria,  with  a  suite  of  seven  thousand  knights  ;  the  princes 
of  Saxony,  Brandenburg,  and  of  Misnia.  The  town  of  Prague 
was  not  large  enough  to  hold  the  crowd  of  visitors,  and  a  vast 
palace  of  wood,  decorated  with  valuable  tapestry,  was  built  on 
the  neighbouring  plain,  and  there  the  guests  of  high  rank  were 
entertained  magnificently.  In  the  public  squares  the  foun- 
tains flowed  with  wine.  The  coronation  took  place  in  the 
cathedral  of  St.  Vit.  The  royal  crown  was  worth  two  thou- 
sand marks  of  silver ;  the  sword  and  buckler,  three  thousand ; 
the  mantle,  four  thousand ;  and  no  one  dared  to  say  what  was 
the  worth  of  the  girdle,  the  rings,  and  the  royal  cap.  Such 
unheard-of  splendour  awaited  the  strangers  who  then  visited 
the  town  of  Prague  ! 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  EARLY  HISTORY  OF  THE  AUSTRIAN  GROUP — THE  HOUSE 
OF  BABENBERG,  973-I246. 

The  Eastern  March — The  First  jBal>e?ibergs — Henry 
lasomirgott  (973-1 1 77). 

Austria,  as  is  well  known,  is  but  the  Latin  form  of  the 
German  Oesterreich,  the  kingdom  of  the  east.  This  celebrated 
historical  name  appears  for  the  first  time  in  996,  in  a  docu- 
ment signed  by  the  emperor  Otto  III.  {in  regione  vidgari 
nomine  Osterrichi)}  The  land  to  which  it  is  there  applied 
was  created  a  march  after  the  destruction  of  the  Avar  empire, 
and  was  governed  like  all  the  other  German  marches.  Politi- 
cally it  was  divided  into  two  margraviates  : '^  that  of  Friuli 
including  Friuli  properly  so  called,  Lower  Pannonia  to  the 
south  of  the  Drave,  Carinthia,  Istria,  and  the  interior  of 
Dalmatia — the  sea-coast  having  been  ceded  to  the  Eastern 
emperor; — the  eastern  margraviate  comprising  Lower  Pan- 
nonia to  the  north  of  the  Drave,  Upper  Pannonia,  and  the 
Ostmark  properly  so  called.  The  Ostmark  included  the 
Traungau^  to  the  east  of  the  Enns,  which  was  completely 
German,  and  the  Grunzvittigau.     The  ecclesiastical  govern- 

'  In  other  documents  we  find  a  Latin  translation  of  the  word — oricittale 
regniim,  orieiitalis  provincia. 

-  Mark  graf,  count  of  the  frontier. 

^  The  Traungau  is  the  district  between  the  two  tributaries  of  the 
Danube,  the  Enns  and  the  Traun. 


128  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

ment  of  these  lands  was  divided  between  the  bishops  of  Salz- 
burg and  Aquileia.  The  bishopric  of  Salzburg  had  been 
founded  in  710  by  St.  Emeran  of  Poictiers  ;  that  of  Aquileia 
presumed  to  date  its  foundation  from  the  time  of  the  apostle 
St.  Mark.  The  population  was  principally  composed  of 
Germans  and  Slavs,  but  except  in  Dalmatia,  these  Slavs  gradu- 
ally lost  their  individuality,  and  could  not  be  distinguished  from 
the  rest  of  the  inhabitants.  The  early  history  of  these  coun- 
tries lacks  the  unity  of  interest  which  the  fate  of  a  dynasty  or 
a  nation  gives  to  those  of  the  Magyar  and  the  Chekh.  They 
form  but  a  portion  of  the  German  kingdom,  and  have  no 
strongly  marked  life  of  their  own. 

The  march,  with  its  varying  frontier,  had  not  even  a 
geographical  unity.  In  876,  it  was  enlarged  by  the  addition 
of  Bavaria ;  in  890,  it  lost  Pannonia,  which  was  given  to 
Bracislav,  the  Croat  prince,  in  return  for  his  help  against  the 
Magyars,  and  in  93 7;  it  was  destroyed  and  absorbed  by  the  Mag- 
yars, who  extended  their  frontier  to  the  river  Enns.  After  the 
battle  of  Lechfeld  or  Augsburg  (955),  Germany  and  Italy  being 
no  longer  exposed  to  Hungarian  invasions,  the  march  was  re- 
constituted and  granted  to  the  margrave  Burkhard,  the  brother- 
in-law  of  Henry  of  Bavaria,  Leopold  of  Babenberg  succeeded 
him  (973),  and  with  him  begins  the  dynasty  of  Babenberg, 
which  ruled  the  country  during  the  time  of  the  Premyslides 
and  the  house  of  Arpad. 

The  Babenbergs  derived  their  name  from  the  castle  of 
Babenberg,  built  by  Henry,  margrave  of  Nordgau,  in  honour 
of  his  wife,  Baba,  sister  of  Henry  the  Fowler.  It  reappears 
in  the  name  of  the  town  of  Bamberg,  which  now  forms  part 
of  the  kingdom  of  Bavaria. 

Leopold,  on  whom  the  chroniclers  bestow  the  title  of 
Illustrious,  was  already  count  of  the  Donaugau,  the  district 
in  which  lies  the  town  of  Ratisbon,  and  of  the  Traungau,  while 
his  father,  Berthold,  was  count  of  the  Nordgau,  the  land  lying 
north  of  Ratisbon.  In  his  time,  the  town  of  Moellk,  on  the 
Danube  above  Vienna,  was  captured  from  the  Magyars.     His 


THE  MARCH  OF  AUSTRIA.  I  29 

successor,  Henry,  resided  there,  and  it  was  there,  according 
to  tradition,  that  Leopold  founded  a  monastery  for  twelve 
secular  priests.  He  perished  at  'Wiirzburg,  struck  by  an  arrow 
aimed  at  his  nephew,  Henry  of  Schweinfurt,  to  avenge  the 
blinding  of  one  of  the  knights  of  that  town.  His  eldest  son, 
Henry  I.  (994-1018),  received  investiture  for  the  margraviate 
from  Otto  III.  Though  not  of  right  an  hereditary  office,  the 
margraviate  soon  became  so,  and  remained  in  the  family  of 
the  Babenbergs  ;  the  march  was  so  important  a  part  of  the 
empire  that  no  doubt  the  emperor  was  glad  to  make  the 
defence  of  this  exposed  district  the  especial  interest  of  one 
family.  The  other  sons  of  Leopold  were  equally  well  pro- 
vided for.  Ernest  obtained  the  duchy  of  Swabia,  and  Poppo 
the  bishopric  which  had  been  recently  founded  at  Bamberg,  and 
afterwards  that  of  Trieste,  The  emperor  also  granted  a  large 
number  of  hereditary  domains  along  the  shores  of  the  Danube 
to  the  margrave  Henry.  The  conversion  of  the  ISIagyars  to 
Christianity  had  softened  the  manners  of  this  conquering  race, 
and  made  Henry's  task  of  protecting  Germany  comparatively 
easy,  but  Adalbert  the  Victorious  (10 18-1056)  had  a  hard 
struggle  against  them,  and  owes  his  name  of  the  Victorious  to 
the  successes  he  gained.  He  extended  the  march  of  Austria 
as  far  as  the  banks  of  the  Leitha.  He  also  helped  the  emperor 
considerably  against  Hungary,  and  received  in  return  fresh 
grants  to  himself  and  his  heirs  of  estates  within  the  march. 

The  Ostmark  was  almost  doubled  in  size  under  the  rule 
of  Adalbert,  who  chose  the  town  of  TuUn,  on  the  Danube, 
between  Vienna  and  Moelk,  as  his  place  of  residence.  His 
son,  Ernest  the  Valiant  (1056-1075),  gave  a  fresh  proof  of  the 
loyalty  of  the  Babenbergs  to  the  emperor  and  empire  by  his 
death  in  battle  against  the  Saxons  at  Unstrut.  But  Leopold 
the  Handsome  (1075-1096)  proved  faithless  to  the  traditions 
of  the  family,  and  took  the  side  of  Gregory  VH.  against  the 
emperor  Henry  IV.  in  the  quarrel  about  investitures.  He  was 
defeated  by  the  imperial  forces  and  reduced  to  submission,  but 
soon  after  took  up  the  cause  of  the  anti-king,   Hermann  of 

K 


130  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUKGARY. 

Luxemburg.  Henry  IV.  thereupon  granted  investiture  for 
the  march  of  Austria  to  Vratislav,  duke  of  Bohemia,  but 
Vratislav  was  never  able  to  gain  possession  of  the  land,  and, 
in  spite  of  the  disloyalty  of  Leopold  the  Handsome,  his  son, 
Leopold  IIL,  succeeded  him  in  the  government  of  the  march. 
This  prince,  who  proudly  styled  himself  margrave  of  Austria 
by  the  grace  of  God,  entered  into  an  alliance  with  the  king  of 
the  Romans,  Henry  V.,  who  had  revolted  against  his  f.ither. 
Henry  V.  rewarded  him  for  this  valuable  assistance  by  giving 
him  his  sister  Agnes  in  marriage.  She  was  the  widow  of 
Frederick  of  Swabia,  so  that  the  marriage  allied  the  house  of 
Austria  with  the  future  dynasty  of  the  Hohenstaufen.  Agnes 
had  eighteen  children,  of  whom  two,  Leopold  and  Henry, 
succeeded  their  father.  One  of  these  eighteen  children  was 
the  celebrated  annalist.  Otto  of  Freisingen,  bishop  of  that 
town.  By  their  marriages  the  daughters  of  Leopold  allied  the 
house  of  Babenberg  with  the  ruling  families  of  Thuringia  and 
Montferrat,  with  the  Piasts  of  Poland  and  the  Premyslides  of 
Bohemia,  When  the  Salic  dynasty  became  extinct  in  the 
person  of  Henry  V.,  Leopold  IH.  was  proposed  as  emperor, 
together  with  Frederick  of  Swabia  and  Lothar  of  Saxony;  a 
strong  proof  of  the  importance  which  had  been  acquired  b}^ 
the  march  of  Austria  and  the  family  which  governed  it. 
Leopold  retired  in  favour  of  Frederick,  but  the  princes  chose 
Lothar  of  Saxony. 

In  the  fifteenth  century,  Leopold  was  canonized  by  pope 
Innocent  VIIL,  and,  indeed,  his  generosity  to  the  Church  de- 
served its  gratitude.  He  founded  new  monasteries,  and  enriched 
those  which  already  existed.  He  gave  Klosterneuburg  to  the 
Benedictines,  and  Heiligenkreuz  to  tlie  Cistercians ;  he  also 
richly  endowed  Kremmunster  and  St.  Florian.  On  his  death, 
the  emperor  Lothar  granted  investiture  to  one  of  his  younger 
sons,  Leopold  IV.  (1136-1141).  The  marriages  of  the  Baben- 
bergs  were  fortunate;  in  11 38,  the  brother-in-law  of  Leopold, 
Conrad  of  Hohenstaufen,  duke  of  Franconia,  was  made 
emperor.     It  was  now  that  the  struggle  began  between  the 


FIRST  DUKE   OF  AUSTRIA.  I3I 

liouse  of  Hohenstaufen  and  the  great  house  of  Welf,  whose 
representative  was  Henry  the  Proud,  duke  of  Saxony  and 
Bavaria.  Henry  was  defeated  in  the  unequal  strife,  and  was 
placed  under  the  ban  of  the  empire,  while  the  duchy  of  Saxony 
was  awarded  to  Albert  the  Bear  of  Brandenburg,  and  the 
duchy  of  Bavaria  fell  to  the  share  of  Leopold  IV.  (1138). 
Henry  the  Proud  died  in  the  following  year,  leaving  behind 
him  a  son  under  age,  who  was  known  later  on  as  Henry 
the  Lion.  His  uncle  Welf  would  not  submit  to  the  forfeiture 
by  his  house  of  their  old  dominions,  and  marched  against 
Leopold  to  reconquer  Bavaria,  but  he  was  defeated  by  Conrad 
at  the  battle  of  Weinsberg  (1140).  Leopold  died  shortly  after 
this  victory,  and  was  succeeded  both  in  the  duchy  of  Bavaria 
and  in  the  margraviate  of  Austria  by  his  brother,  Henry  H. 
This  prince  was  surnamed  lasomirgott  from  his  favourite 
motto  {Inch  sam  viir  Gott  helfe — So  God  be  my  aid).  He  was 
the  first  hereditary  duke  of  Austria. 

Henry  II.,  lasomirgott  (1141-1177),  endeavoured  to 
strengthen  himself  in  Bavaria  by  marrying  Gertrude,  widow  of 
Henry  the  Proud,  and  forcing  her  to  obtain  from  her  son, 
Henry  the  Lion,  a  renunciation  of  all  his  rights  in  favour  of 
her  new  husband.  But  after  the  death  of  his  mother,  Henry 
declared  this  renunciation  null  and  void,  on  the  plea  that  it 
had  been  extorted  from  him  when  he  was  young  and  in- 
experienced. This  marriage,  which  had  been  entered  into 
solely  on  grounds  of  expediency,  was  speedily  dissolved,  and 
soon  after  we  find  Henry  lasomirgott  taking  part  in  one  of 
the  crusades  and  marrying,  at  Constantinople,  the  daughter  of 
the  Byzantine  emperor,  Theodore  Comnenus.  The  emperor 
Frederick  I.  of  Swabia,  who  was  allied  both  to  the  family 
of  the  Welfs  and  that  of  the  Babenbergs,  either  dared  not 
or  would  not  interfere  to  put  an  end  to  the  quarrel.  He  left 
it  to  be  decided  by  the  German  princes,  and,  in  1156,  the 
diet  decreed  that  Bavaria  should  be  restored  to  Henry  the 
Lion.  It  was  owing  to  the  wise  counsel  of  his  relation,  Otto 
of  Freisingen,  that  Henry  lasomirgott  finally  gave  up  Bavaria, 


132  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

and  he  lost  nothing  by  this  unwilHng  act  of  disinterestedness, 
for  he  secured  from  the  emperor  considerable  compensation. 

From  this  time  forward,  Austria,  whicli  had  been  largely 
increased  by  the  addition  of  the  greater  part  of  the  lands  lying 
between  the  Enns  and  the  Inn,  was  removed  from  its  almost 
nominal  subjection  to  Bavaria  and  became  a  separate  duchy. 
An  imperial  edict,  dated  the  21st  of  September,  1156,  declares 
the  new  duchy  hereditary  even  in  the  female  line,  and  authorizes 
the  dukes  to  absent  themselves  from  all  diets  except  those 
which  were  held  in  Bavarian  territory.  It  also  permits  them, 
in  case  of  a  threatened  extinction  of  their  dynasty,  to  propose 
a  successor  {jus  affectandi).  This  edict  has  been  named  the 
privilegium  minus,  to  distinguish  it  from  another  but  apocryphal 
document  called  the  privilegium  inajus,  which  was  manu- 
factured in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  of  which  we  shall 
speak  later  on. 

Henry  11.  was  one  of  the  founders  of  Vienna.  He  con- 
structed a  fortress  there,  and,  in  order  to  civilize  the  surround- 
ing country,  sent  for  some  Scotch  monks,  of  Avhom  there  were 
many  at  this  time  in  Germany. 

Leopold    V.   (1T98-1230) — Frederick  the  Fighter  (i 230-1 246) 
— AcquisitioJi  of  Styria  ajid part  of  Carniola. 

Ill  1177^  Leopold  v.,  called  the  Virtuous,  succeeded  Henry 
lasomirgott.  In  his  reign  the  duchy  of  Austria  gained  Styria, 
an  important  addition  to  its  territory.  This  province  was 
inhabited  by  Slovenes  and  Germans,  and  took  its  name  from 
the  castle  of  Steyer,  built  in  980  by  Otokar  III.,  count  of  the 
Traungau.  In  1056,  it  was  created  a  margraviate,  and  in  11 50 
it  was  enlarged  by  the  addition  of  the  counties  of  Maribor 
(Marburg)  and  Cilly.  In  11 80,  Otokar  "\T.  of  Styria  (1164- 
1192)  obtained  the  hereditary  title  of  duke  from  the  emperor 
in  return  for  his  help  against  Henry  the  Lion.  The  imperial 
gift  came  just  at  the  right  moment  for  Austria,  for  Otokar 
dying  without  children  and  making  Leopold  his  heir,  Styria 
was  annexed  to  Austria  in   11 92,  and  has  remained  so  ever 


LEO  FOLD    ]'.  133 

since.  The  emperor  Henry  VI.  ratified  its  annexation  at 
"Worms, 

Leopold  V.  is  the  first  of  the  Austrian  princes  whose  name 
is  known  in  Western  Europe.  He  joined  the  third  crusade, 
and  thus  came  in  contact  with  most  of  the  CathoUc  kings  of 
the  time.  He  first  visited  the  Holy  Land  in  1182;  on  his 
return  thither  in  1191  he  met  Philip  Augustus  and  Richard 
Coeur  de  Lion,  and  at  the  siege  of  St.  Jean  d'Acre  quarrelled 
with  the  turbulent  king  of  England.  In  1192,  he  returned  to 
his  own  land.  Shortly  after,  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  was  over- 
taken by  a  storm  between  Venice  and  Aquileia,  and  determined 
to  cross  Europe  incognito  in  order  to  regain  England.  Leopold 
heard  of  his  presence  in  his  territories,  and  was  not  slow  to 
seize  the  opportunity  to  revenge  himself  on  his  detested 
rival.  He  had  him  made  prisoner  and  confined  in  the  castle 
of  Diirrenstein,  near  Krems  on  the  Danube,  and  afterwards 
sold  his  prisoner  to  the  emperor  for  twenty  thousand  marks. 
While  Richard  was  still  in  his  power  he  had  extracted  from 
him  the  promise  of  a  marriage  between  the  houses  of  Baben- 
berg  and  Plantagenet.  These  incidents  would  seem  to  show 
that  he  had  but  little  claim  to  his  surname  of  the  Virtuous. 

The  successor  of  Leopold  V.  was  Frederick  I.  Like  his 
father,  he  was  an  ardent  crusader,  and  only  returned  from 
Palestine  to  die.  During  his  absence,  his  brother  Leopold, 
surnamed  the  Proud,  who  had  been  made  duke  of  Styria  by 
his  father,  was  entrusted  with  the  regency  in  Austria.  He 
succeeded  Frederick  (1198-1230),  and  played  an  important 
part  in  the  affairs  of  Germany,  attaching  himself  to  the  cause 
of  Philip  of  Hohenstaufen,  and  helping  him  to  defeat  the  anti- 
king  Otto  IV.,  who  had  been  recognized  by  the  pope.  Inno- 
cent III.  On  the  death  of  Philip,  Leopold  VL  was  politic 
enough  to  keep  on  fair  terms  with  his  rival,  and  kept  out  of 
the  way  when  Frederic  11.  was  chosen  emperor.  A  crusade 
in  Spain  furnished  him  with  a  good  excuse  for  leaving  Austria. 
He  reached  Spain,  however,  too  late  to  be  of  use,  for  when  he 
met  the  kings  of  Castile  and  Aragon  at  Calatrava  they  had 


134  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

already  defeated  the  ]\Ioors  at  Tolosa.  In  121 7,  he  again 
took  the  cross,  set  out  for  Palestine  accompanied  by  Andrew  II., 
king  of  Hungary,  and  played  a  distinguished  part  in  the 
expedition  against  Damietta. 

The  emperor  Frederick  II.  took  every  possible  means  of 
assuring  the  fidelity  of  so  powerful  a  vassal  and  so  valiant  a 
knight.  On  the  death  of  the  archbishop  of  Cologne,  he 
appointed  him  Reichsverwese/;  or  vicar  of  the  empire,  and  he 
gave  his  daughter  in  marriage  to  Leopold's  son  Henry.  This 
alliance  v/ith  the  imperial  house,  and  the  important  position  in 
Christendom  which  Leopold  had  acquired,  enabled  him  to  plav 
the  part  of  mediator  in  the  quarrels  which  arose  between 
Frederick  and  the  pope,  Honorius  III.  With  this  end  in  view 
lie  undertook  a  journey  into  Italy  in  1229,  where,  with  the 
help  of  the  patriarch  of  Aquileia  and  the  archbishop  of  Salz- 
burg, he  was  able  to  bring  about  an  agreement  between  the 
emperor  and  the  pontiff,  which  was  concluded  at  San  Germano. 
He  did  not  survive  this  peaceful  triumph,  but  died  at  San 
Germano,  and  was  buried  at  Monte  Cassino  (1230). 

At  home,  \.g.o\)o\<1  endeavoured  to  develop  the  commerce 
and  trade  of  his  country.  He  made  Vienna  the  staple  town, 
and  lent  a  sum  of  thirty  thousand  marks  of  silver  to  the  city 
to  enable  it  to  increase  its  trade.  He  adorned  it  with  many 
new  buildings,  among  them  the  Neue  Burg.  He  strengthened 
the  defences  of  the  frontiers,  founded  new  monasteries,  and 
granted  municipal  institutions  to  Enns,  Krems,  and  Vienna. 
But  while  busy  with  the  interests  of  the  state,  Leopold  did  not 
forget  those  of  his  private  domains,  which  he  increased  by  the 
acquisition  of  various  allodial  estates  within  his  duchy.  Besides 
these,  he  purchased  lands  in  Carniola  from  bishop  Gerald  of 
Freisingen,  and  this  led  the  way  to  the  future  annexation  of 
Carniola  to  Austria.  The  revenue  of  the  state  in  his  time 
rose  to  about  sixty  thousand  marks  of  silver. 

Leopold  the  Proud  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Frederick 
the  Fighter  (1230-1246).  The  short  reign  of  this  prince  was 
one    continued   struggle   against   his   neighbours.      With    the 


FREDERICK  THE  FIGHTER.  I  35 

emperor  Frederic  II.  he  fought  against  Hungary  and  against 
Bohemia,  and  then  he  turned  against  Frederick  to  assist  the 
Lombard  cities,  and  to  support  the  emperor's  rival,  Henry  of 
Thuringia,  who  had  married  his  sister  Margaret.  His  aim 
seemed  to  be  complete  independence,  and  it  was  not  long 
before  he  was  placed  under  the  ban  of  the  empire,  and 
Bohemia,  Bavaria,  Brandenburg,  and  Hungary  all  took  up 
arms  against  him.  The  celebrated  chancellor,  Peter  de  Vinea, 
was  called  upon  to  write  a  violent  pamphlet  against  him,  in 
which  he  was  represented  as  a  treacherous  member  of  the 
empire  and  a  monster  of  iniquity  who  had  forfeited  the 
imperial  clemency.  It  was  impossible  to  withstand  so  many 
enemies.  The  lands  on  the  Upper  Enns  as  far  as  Linz  fell 
into  the  hands  of  Otto  of  Bavaria,  while  A^'ienna  was  declared 
an  imperial  city,  and  a  lieutenant  was  sent  by  the  emperor  to 
govern  the  conquered  Austrian  territory.  But  the  Fighter 
defended  himself  with  vigour,  and  in  the  end  reconquered 
part  of  his  land,  and  became  reconciled  with  the  empeior 
(1240).  Frederick  annulled  the  privileges  recently  given  to 
Vienna,  and  at  the  diet  of  Verona  (1245)  confirmed  the  powers 
which  had  been  granted  to  the  dukes  of  Austria  in  1156. 
Thus  the  very  revolts  of  Austria  against  the  empire  turned  to 
her  advantage,  while  the  misfortunes  which  now  burst  over  her 
neighbours  were  of  equal  benefit  to  her. 

The  Mongols  had  invaded  Hungary.  King  Bela  applied 
for  help  to  Austria,  and  offered  in  exchange  for  her  assistance 
to  pledge  to  Frederick  the  Fighter  three  of  his  coi/iiiafs. 
Frederick,  who  was  as  little  generous  towards  Bela  as  his  pre- 
decessor had  been  towards  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  demanded 
their  entire  surrender,  and  then  declared  war  against  Hungary. 
He  died  on  the  15th  of  June,  1246,  on  the  banks  of  the  Leitha, 
slain,  according  to  some,  by  the  Hungarians ;  according  to 
others,  by  one  of  his  own  followers.  He  was  hated  even  by 
many  of  his  own  subjects.  "  A  hard  man,"  one  of  the 
chroniclers  calls  him  ;  "cruel  in  his  judgments,  brave  in  fight, 
greedy, .  and  rapacious.     He   had  filled  with   terror  both  his 


136  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

friends  and  his  neighbours.  No  man  loved  him  ;  all  feared 
him."  Ulric  of  Lichtenstein,  the  knightly  poet  of  Styria.  is 
more  tender  of  his  memory :  "  He  is  dead  ...  he  has  left 
great  woe  behind  him  in  Styria  and  in  Austria.  .  .  .  Many 
are  now  poor  who  were  rich.  .  .  .  His  soul  must  be  in 
heaven,  for  he  was  kind  to  the  brave."  With  him  the  dynasty 
of  Babenberg  came  to  an  end  (1246).  Their  remains  lie  in 
the  church  of  the  little  town  of  Molk,  which  has  long  since 
been  eclipsed  by  the  splendour  of  Vienna. 

The  Laws  of  Austria  under  the  Babenhcrgs — The 
Landeshohcit —  The  Tmviis — Literature. 

The   immediate  authority  of  the  princes  of  the   empire 
over  the  lands  which  had  been  entrusted  to  them  had  been 
greatly  increased  by  the  right  of  inheritance,  conferred  in  the 
first  instance  upon  the   margraves,   and  afterwards  upon  the 
dukes,    while    the   quan-els   with   the   popes   had   helped    to 
weaken  the  authority  of  the  emperors.       Crradually   corpora- 
tions, lay  and  ecclesiastical,  monasteries,  towns,  and  citizen.s 
were   freed  from    dependence  on    the  emperors,  and  placed 
under  the  authority  of  the  princes.     This  authority  is  called 
by  German  historians   la?ideshoheit,   i.e.   lordship   over  a  par- 
ticular district.     We  find  this  spirit  of  "particularism"  espe- 
cially strong  in  Southern  Germany.     Thus,  as  early  as  1184, 
Otokar,  duke  of  Styria,  called  \\\msQ\(  landesherr,  lord  of  the 
land ;    and    the   annexation    of  Styria  to  Austria   must  have 
strengthened  in  the  latter  the  feeling  of  local  independence. 

^^'ith  the  development  of  the  landeshoheit  the  old  nobility 
declined,  and  its  place  was  filled  by  an  official  nobilit}-, 
composed  of  the  followers  of  the  prince  who  bore  office  about 
his  person ;  and  very  soon  the  difference  between  these  two 
classes  of  nobles  disappeared,  as  both  became  equally  de- 
pendent on  the  prince.  In  this  matter,  again,  Styria  set  the 
example  to  Austria,  the  dukes  of  Austria  having  promised  the 
miuisteriales  of  Styria  that  they  would  observe  those  privileges 
which  had  been  granted  to  them  by  their  earlier  princes. 


LAWS  OF  STYRI.l.  I  37 

As  regards  municipal  law  also  Styria  was  ahead  of  Austria. 
As  early  as  12 12,  the  towns  of  Enns  obtained  from  the  em- 
peror a  muncipal  code,  or  stadtrccht,  the  text  of  which  is 
preserved  to  this  day  among  its  archives.  According  to  this 
code,  the  lord  of  the  land  is  the  archduke,  and  for  him  is 
reserved  the  punishment  of  certain  crimes ;  his  will  is  law. 
Under  him  judicial  authority  is  exercised  by  a  town  judge, 
assisted  by  an  inferior  magistrate  {nachrichter)  and  by  police 
{sche)-gen),  who  are  paid  officials.  The  stadtrecht  is  mainly 
a  code  of  criminal  law  founded  on  the  principle  of  ivehrgeld; 
in  all  cases  of  pecuniary  compensation,  a  third  of  the  fine  is 
allotted  to  the  judge.  Trials  by  ordeal  are  allowed.  The  law 
of  inheritance  permits  the  wife  or  child  to  inherit,  or  the 
nearest  relations,  if  they  reside  on  the  land  of  the  duchy ;  if 
not,  they  are  only  to  have  half.  The  foreigner  who  dies  in  the 
land  is  allowed  to  leave  his  property  to  whomsoever  he  likes  ; 
if  he  dies  without  a  will,  for  a  year  and  a  day  it  is  held  in 
trust  for  his  heirs;  if  no  one  then  claims  it,  it  is  to  become  the 
property  of  the  duke.  A  municipal  council  is  formed  by  six 
of  the  highest  burgesses,  whose  business  it  is  to  control  the 
markets  and  to  watch  over  the  interests  of  the  town.  The 
legal  maxim  of  England,  "  Every  man's  house  is  his  castle,"  is 
well  known.  The  stadrecht  maintains  the  inviolability  of  the 
household  in  almost  the  same  words  :  "  Wo.  will  that  for 
each  citizen  his  house  shall  be  a  fortress  {pro  muiiitione)  for 
himself,  his  family,  and  whomsoever  may  enter  his  door." 
Every  violation  of  the  hearth  is  punished  by  a  fine  of  five 
marks  or  the  loss  of  a  hand.  The  citizens  are  to  have  the 
right  of  keeping  horses,  both  for  their  business  and  amusement. 

Leopold  VI.  took  this  code  as  his  model  for  the  one  he 
granted  to  Vienna  in  1221,  wherein,  indeed,  he  carried  its 
principles  even  further.  Thus,  to  the  laws  concerning  the 
inviolability  of  the  household,  it  is  added  that  no  one  shall 
enter  a  house  with  a  bow  or  a  quiver  ;  that  no  one  shall  walk 
about  the  town  with  a  poignard  at  his  girdle  under  penalty  of 
the  payment  of  a  talent  and  the  forfeiture  of  the  weapon  ;  that 


138  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

he  who  shall  conceal  a  weapon  in  his  boot  shall  pay  ten  talents 
or  lose  his  hand.  The  chief  citizens  of  each  district  of  the 
town  are  ordered  to  exercise  supervision  over  all  business 
transactions  to  the  amount  of  two  talents.  A  striking  analogy 
is  to  be  found  between  the  municipal  laws  of  the  Babenbergs 
and  those  of  the  Flemish  and  Picard  towns,  Ghent,  Bruges, 
Ypres,  Arras,  Furnes,  and  Laon.  This  is  explained  by  the  large 
trade  which  the  Flemings  carried  on  in  the  Danubian  countries, 
especially  in  Hungary.  Flemish  merchants  resided  in  Vienna, 
and  as  early  as  1208  we  find  them  in  possession  of  several 
privileges.  Other  towns  also  received  municipal  laws,  but 
these  we  cannot  here  examine. 

The  laws  concerning  the  Jews  deserve  special  notice,  as 
they  are  singularly  liberal  for  the  time.  They  have  their 
synagogues  in  Vienna  from  1200  onward.  The  coining  of 
money  is  entrusted  to  them  with  the  title  of  "counts  of  the 
chamber."  Some  of  the  laws  show  remarkable  tolerance, 
especially  if  we  consider  the  prejudices  of  the  Middle  Ages  ; 
for  example,  if  a  stolen  article  is  found  in  the  house  of  a  Jew, 
it  is  enough  for  him  to  swear  that  he  has  purchased  it,  and  he 
has  only  to  restore  it  in  return  for  what  he  gave  for  it.  The 
laws  of  Hungary,  Poland,  Bohemia,  and  Thuringia  concerning 
Jews,  were  all  copied  from  those  of  Austria. 

Under  the  protection  of  peaceful  laws,  the  trade  and 
industry  of  Austria  developed  rapidly.  The  situation  of  the 
country  -was  especially  fortunate  as  regards  commerce,  placed 
as  she  was  on  the  frontiers  of  Germany,  Bohemia,  and  Hungary, 
and  with  the  Danube  as  her  riven  A  rhymed  chronicler  en- 
thusiastically celebrates  her  splendour  and  prosperity  :  "  This 
land  has  ever}'thing  in  abundance — cattle  and  wine,  corn 
and  other  fruits ;  all  that  is  needed  for  the  food  of  man — 
game  and  fish  and  excellent  bread.  The  Danube,  with  her 
clear  waters,  adorns  the  landscape,  and  brings  day  and  night 
without  pause,  all  that  is  needed  to  the  towns  and  the  villages." 
This  joyous  and  fruitful  land  may  be  called  the  Italy  of 
Germany. 


TRADE  REGULATIOXS.  I  39 

We  very  early  find  commercial  relations  established  between 
Styria  and  Italy.  To  increase  them  Leopold  built  a  bridge  of 
stone  over  the  Save,  at  the  spot  called  to  this  day  Steinbruck. 
But  trade  in  those  days  was  far  from  being  free.  For  example, 
the  town  of  Gratz  had  the  rights  of  a  staple-town ;  all  foreign 
goods  had  to  be  brought  there  to  be  weighed  on  the  town 
scales,  and  could  only  be  carried  by  the  town  waggons.  The 
rules  of  the  staple  in  some  other  towns  contained  still  more 
irksome  regulations.  All  goods  sent  through  the  town  of 
Bruck,  on  the  river  ]\Iur,  had  to  be  exposed  in  the  public 
square  and  put  up  to  auction,  and  only  that  portion  which  had 
found  no  purchaser  among  the  citizens  was  allowed  to  leave 
the  place. 

Enns  was  the  great  commercial  city  on  the  way  from 
Ratisbon  to  Vienna.  It  was  the  great  warehouse  of  the 
Augsburg  merchants,  who  went  to  buy  furs  at  the  fair  of 
Kiev,  and  carried  western  wares  into  Russia.  Along  the 
same  road  were  jSIedlich,  St.  Polten,  Tulnn,  Stein,  and 
Mauthausen.  Along  it  travelled  the  merchants  of  Burgundy, 
Lorraine,  Cologne,  and  INIaestricht ;  the  woven  stuffs  of  the 
East,  the  furs  of  Hungary,  the  silks  of  Venice,  found  their 
way  by  it  to  the  north  and  w^est.  Purchase  and  sale  were 
carried  on  partly  by  money,  partly  by  barter.  The  money  of 
the  Babenbergs  was  coined  at  Venice  and  Neustadt ;  few 
of  these  coins  remain.  For  those  times  the  riches  of  Austria 
were  great,  and  manners  improved  in  consequence  of  this 
prosperity.  The  monasteries  furnished  a  large  number  of 
chroniclers,  and  schools  were  opened  by  the  monks.  The 
theatre  seems  to  have  been  unknown ;  we  meet  with  but  one 
mention  of  an  Easter  mystery  {(Jsiersjyiel) ;  this  was  at  the 
monastery  of  St.  Florian.  Poetry,  however,  was  cultivated 
with  ardour  in  the  court  of  the  Babenbergs,  and,  according 
to  tradition,  Leopold  VI.  was  a  poet,  and  Frederick  the 
Fighter  wrote  love-songs.  Three  of  the  most  celebrated  of 
the  minnesingers,  Reinar  von  Hagenau,  Walter  von  der  Vogel- 
weide,   and   Reinar  von  Zweter,    passed   part  of  their   lives 


140  HISTORY  OF  AUSTKO-HUXGARY. 

llicre.  AV'alter  called  Austria  his  second  fatherland ;  "  it  was 
there,"  he  said,  "that  he  had  learnt  to  sing  and  to  relate 
stories."  Several  tinaes  he  celebrates  the  names  of  Leopold 
VI.  and  Frederick  the  Fighter.  Tannhaiiser  praised  Frederick 
II.  during  his  life,  and  mourned  for  him  after  his  death. 
'•'With  him,"  he  says,  "all  joy  is  dead."  Another  poet. 
Nidhart  of  Reuenthal,  the  Bavarian,  also  dwelt  for  some  time 
in  Austria,  and  his  poems  very  pleasantly  describe  the  dances 
and  rustic  games  of  the  country. 

But  the  minnesingers  did  not  flourish  in  Austria  onl)-.  We 
find  them  also  in  Styria,  where  lived  Rudolf  van  Stadek,  and 
where  may  still  be  seen  the  castle  of  Ulric  von  lichtenstein,  on 
the  banks  of  the  Mur.  He  was  cup-bearer  {iruchsess)  to  duke 
Frederick.  This  singer  of  the  most  tender  sentiments  and 
most  refined  gallantry  never  knew  how  to  read  or  write.  At 
the  famous  poetical  tournament  of  Wartburg,  at  the  court  of 
Thuringia,  where  the  seven  greatest  singers  then  living  rivalled 
one  another  in  singing  the  praises  of  their  masters,  it  was  to  the 
sun  itself,  says  the  legend,  that  Henry  of  Ofterdingen  compared 
the  duke  of  Austria. 

Thus  we  find,  under  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Babenberg, 
a  German  literature  forcing  its  way  between  a  Slavonic  Bohemia 
and  a  Magyar  Hungary. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   AUSTRIAN    GROUP    UNDER   THE    FIRST    HABSBURGS 
(1273-1493). 

Rudolf  I.  invests  his  Sons  ivitJi  Austria  and  Styria  (1273-1298) 
— FndericJz  the  Handsome  (1330-1358) — Acquisition  of 
Carinthia. 

Historians  have  given  the  name  of  "the  Austrian  Interregnum" 
to  the  period  which  elapsed  between  the  death  of  the  last  of  the 
Babenbergs  and  the  accession  of  the  first  prince  of  the  house 
of  Habsburg.  We  have  already  seen  in  the  history  of  Bohemia 
how  the  inheritance  of  the  former  was  for  a  time  united  to  tlie 
kingdom  of  St.  Vacslav;  thirty  years  elapsed  after  the  death  of 
Frederick  the  Fighter  before  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  family 
which  now  holds  possession  of  it.  The  origin  of  this  family 
has  been  a  constant  puzzle  to  the  fertile  imaginations  of  genea- 
logists. Some  among  them  trace  it  back  to  the  Merovingians ; 
others  to  the  Caroliugians  ;  others,  again,  to  that  duke  Ethico 
of  Alamania  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  common  stock 
from  which  sprang  the  houses  of  Habsburg,  Lorraine,  and 
Baden.  What  is  quite  certain  is  that  the  house  of  Habsburg 
is  of  Alamannic  origin.  The  first  domains  held  by  it  were  in 
the  present  Alsace  and  Switzerland,  and  in  Swabia.  It  took 
its  name  from  the  castle  of  Habsburg,  which  was  built  in  the 
year  1027,  by  Werner,  bishop  of  Strasburg,  on  the  heights  of 
Windisch,  near  the  river  Aar,  in  what  is  now  the  canton  of 
Aargau.    The  first  mention  of  the  castle  of  Habsburg  {Habichts- 


142  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

burg,  the  castle  of  vultures,  the  ruins  of  which  still  remain) 
occurs  in  a  document  of  the  year  1099. 

We  have  nothing  to  do  here  with  the  deeds  of  Rudolf^  as 
emperor,  and  we  have  already  narrated  in  the  history  of  Bohemia 
the  manner  in  which  he  conquered  the  Austrian  territories. 
His  exploits  and  his  triumphs  spread  far  and  wide  the  terror  of 
his  name.  "  O  Lord  God,"  exclaims  a  contemporary,  "keep  a 
firm  seat  on  Thy  throne,  else  will  Rudolf  overthrow  Thee  also." 
When  once  he  was  established  on  the  Danube,  he  kej^t  Bohemia 
and  Hungary  well  in  check,  and  was  able  to  maintain  a  watch 
upon  their  actions  far  more  efficient  than  could  have  been  that 
of  the  emperors  who  were  settled  on  the  Rhine.  But  the 
empire  was  elective,  and  Rudolf  could  not  feel  sure  that  it 
would  remain  in  his  family ;  he  therefore  saw  the  need  of 
doing  all  he  could  to  secure  to  his  children  the  lands  he  had 
conquered.  After  obtaining  the  sanction  of  the  electors,  he 
solemnly  invested  (1282)  his  two  sons,  Albert  and  Rudolf,  with 
Austria,  Styria,  and  Carniola;  and  a  few  years  later  (1286) 
he  assigned  Carinthia  to  Meinhard  of  Tyrol,  to  reward  him  for 
the  help  he  had  received  from  him  in  his  war  against  Premysl 
Otokar.  But  the  states  of  Austria  and  Styria  were  but  little 
satisfied  with  their  new  master;  they  disliked  the  Swabian 
counsellors  whom  Albert  brought  with  him,  and  before  long  a 
revolution  broke  out  in  Austria.  The  town  of  Vienna,  which, 
during  the  struggle  with  Otokar,  Rudolf  had  made  into  a  fief 
directly  dependent  upon  himself,  revolted,  and  was  only 
subdued  by  force  of  arms.  Rudolf  died  on  the  15th  of  July, 
1291,  and  his  son  Albert  was  not  chosen  emperor  till  1298. 
After  the  murder  of  the  last  of  the  Prcmyslides  at  Olomouc, 
Albert  succeeded  in  gaining  for  his  son  Rudolf  the  crown  of 
Bohemia,  a  crown,  however,  which  he  was  not  able  long  to 
retain ;   two   centuries   had   yet   to  elapse   before  the  house 

^  The  Austrian  genealogists,  who  liavc  taken  indefatigable  but  in- 
effectual pains  to  trace  (Rudolf's)  illustrious  descent  from  the  Normans, 
carry  it  with  great  probability  to  Ethico,  duke  of  Alsace  in  the  seventh 
century,  and  unquestionably  to  Gontram  the  Rich,  count  of  Alsace  and 
Ereisgau,  who  flourished  in  the  tentli. — Co\e,  House  of  Austria. 


BATTLE   OF  MCHLDORF.  1 43 

of    Habsburg   obtained    possession   of    the   kingdom    of    St. 
Vacslav. 

We  shall  say  nothing  of  the  domains  of  the  Habsburgs  in 
Swabia  and  in  what  are  now  Alsace  and  Switzerland,  as  their 
history  forms  part  of  that  of  German}^  In  Austria,  Albert's 
reign  was  disturbed,  as  we  have  seen,  by  troubles  with  the 
town  of  Vienna  and  also  with  the  archbishops  of  Salzburg;  he 
was  assassinated  in  Switzerland  by  John  tlie  Parricide  (1308). 
His  son  Frederick  the  Handsome  vainly  tried  to  obtain  the 
imperial  crown  ;  together  with  that  of  Bohemia  it  passed  to  the 
house  of  Luxemburg,  Henry  VII.  being  chosen  emperor,  and 
his  son  John  becoming  king  of  Bohemia.  On  the  death  of 
Henry  (1313),  leaving  John  still  too  young  for  election  to 
the  empire,  the  Luxemburg  party  proposed  Louis,  duke  of 
Bavaria,  as  their  candidate,  while  the  Austrian  party  elected 
Frederick.  This  led  to  a  war,  which  lasted  eight  years,  and 
was  only  ended  by  the  battle  of  Miihldorf  and  the  defeat  of 
Frederick  (1322).  He  was  taken  prisoner,  and  only  released 
on  the  understanding  that  he  should  abandon  all  claim  to  the 
empire ;  but,  in  spite  of  this,  a  treaty  was  concluded  later  on 
between  the  rivals,  which  secured  to  them  a  condonilnium. 
Frederick  took  the  title  of  king  of  the  Romans,  but  he  had 
hardly  any  of  the  power  usually  attached  to  the  name.  He 
died  in  1330.  His  two  brothers,  Albert  the  Wise  and  Otto 
the  Gay,  threatened  to  renew  the  war  with  the  emperor,  and 
entered  into  an  alliance  with  king  John  of  Bohemia,  but  the 
ambition  of  this  latter  prince  made  of  him  rather  a  rival  than  a 
useful  ally.  He  had  married  his  second  son,  John  Henry,  at 
the  age  of  eight,  to  the  celebrated  INIargaret  Maultasche  (Pouch- 
mouth),  daughter  of  the  duke  of  Tyrol  and  Carinthia,  who  was 
then  twelve  years  old,  hoping  by  thus  reuniting  these  two 
provinces  to  Bohemia  to  regain  the  power  which  had  once 
belonged  to  Premysl  Otokar,  to  hold  the  empire  in  check,  and 
to  destroy  the  power  of  Austria, 

A  common  danger  once  more  united  the  emperor  and  the 
Austrian  princes.     By  the  treaty  of  Hagenau  (1330),  it  was 


144  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-nUNGARY. 

arranged  that  on  the  death  of  duke  Henry,  who  had  no  male 
heirs,  Carinthia  should  become  the  property  of  Austria,  and 
Tyrol  that  of  the  emperor.  Henry  died  in  1335,  whereupon 
the  emperor,  Louis  of  Bavaria,  declared  that  Margaret  Maul- 
tasche  had  forfeited  all  rights  of  inheritance,  and  proceeded 
to  assign  the  two  provinces  to  the  Austrian  princes,  with  the 
exception  of  some  portion  of  the  Tyrol  which  devolved  on 
the  house  of  Wittelsbach.  Carinthia  alone,  however,  obeyed 
the  emperor ;  the  Tyrolese  nobles  declared  for  Margaret,  and, 
with  the  help  of  John  of  Bohemia,  this  princess  was  able  to 
keep  possession  of  this  part  of  her  inheritance.  Thus  early 
did  Tyrol  display  that  loyalty  for  which  she  afterwards  became 
so  famous.^ 

Carinthia  also  did  not  long  remain  in  the  undisputed  pos- 
session of  Austria.  Margaret  was  soon  divorced  from  her  very 
youthful  husband  (1342),  and  shortly  after  married  the  son  of 
the  emperor  Louis  of  Bavaria,  who  hoped  to  be  able  to  invest 
his  son,  not  only  with  Tyrol,  but  also  with  Carinthia,  and  once 
more  we  find  the  houses  of  Habsburg  and  Luxemburg  united 
by  a  common  interest.  During  the  whole  of  this  time  Bohemia 
and  Austria  were  in  a  perpetual  state  of  oscillation  and  unstable 
equilibrium.  When,  hov/ever,  Charles  IV.  of  Bohemia  was 
chosen  emperor,  he  consented  to  leave  Carinthia  in  the  pos- 
session of  Austria.  Albert  did  homage  for  it,  and  rejoiced  all 
the  more  at  the  restoration  of  peace  with  the  empire  because 
just  then  his  struggle  with  Ziirich  and  Glarus  claimed  all  his 
attention.     (Defeat  of  Nofels,  1352.) 

This  prince  not  only  increased  the  territories  of  Austria, 

'  Tyrol  freed  herself  from  the  suzerainty  of  Bavaria  in  very  early  times. 
She  was  divided  among  a  number  of  princes,  lay  and  ecclesiastical.  The 
principal  of  these  were  the  counts  of  the  Adige  or  of  the  Tyrol  and  the 
counts  of  Andechs,  who  obtained  the  title  of  duke  from  Frederick  I.,  and 
called  themselves  dukes  of  Meran.  Their  race  came  to  an  end  in  1248,  and 
their  domains  were  united  to  those  of  the  counts  of  Tyrol,  who  thus  became 
jiossessed  of  the  larger  part  of  the  lands  Ijetween  the  Inn  and  the  Adige. 
Tyrol  takes  its  name  from  the  castle  of  Tirol,  which  was  built  on  the  site  of 
the  Roman  station  Teriolis,  not  far  from  Meran,  on  the  upper  waters  of  the 
Adige. 


RUDOLF  IV.  145 

his  home  pohcy  was  also  extremely  able,  and  his  good  govern- 
ment earned  for  him  the  surname  of  the  Wise.  He  gave 
Vienna  a  new  municipal  code,  and  one  also  to  Klagenfurt,  the 
capital  of  Carinthia,  and  he  also  put  an  end  to  trial  by  combat 
in  the  latter  country.  The  chroniclers  tell  us  of  his  great 
popularity.  According  to  a  story  of  the  fifteenth  century,  one 
day,  when  he  was  giving  audience  to  his  subjects,  a  poor 
peasant  entered  the  hall  and  remained  long  with  his  eyes  fixed 
upon  the  prince.  Albert,  thinking  he  was  some  petitioner, 
invited  him  to  approach  and  tell  him  what  was  his  request. 
"My  lord,"  answered  the  peasant,  "I  ask  for  nothing  but  to 
be  allowed  to  see  you,  and  to  know  that  you  are  well."  A  few 
years  before  his  death,  he  published  certain  directions  for  his 
family,  in  which  he  exhorted  his  sons  to  reign  together  in  love 
and  virtue,  honouring  one  another ;  and  the  elder  to  claim  no 
superiority  over  his  younger  brothers.  He  died  on  the  20th 
of  July,  1358,  at  the  age  of  sixty-nine.  "  He  was,"  says  a 
contemporary,  "  a  man  beloved  of  God,  honoured  in  many 
lands,  and  a  generous  father  to  many  kings  and  princes." 

Rudolf  IV.  (13  5  8-1 36  5)— 77/^  Privilegiuin  Ma  jus — Acquisition 
of  Tyrol  ( 1 363) — Austria  divided  (1379). 

According  to  the  wish  of  their  father,  the  four  sons  of  Albert 
reigned  after  him  ;  but  the  eldest,  Rudolf  IV.,  exercised  execu- 
tive authority  in  the  name  of  the  others.  This  prince  was 
called  by  four  several  surnames — the  Silent,  the  Magnificent, 
the  Learned,  and  the  Founder.  "  Each  one, '  says  Mr.  Krones, 
"  characterized  one  of  his  qualities.  He  always  preserved  the 
greatest  secrecy  about  his  plans.  He  surrounded  himself  by  a 
magnificent  court  and  loved  high-sounding  titles,  not  from 
liildish  vanity,  but  because  he  knew  how  much  importance 
'.he  world  attaches  to  such  things.  He  was  in  all  things  the 
rival  of  his  father-in-law,  Charles  IV.,  but  more  especially  in 
that  which  concerned  foundations  in  favour  of  the  Church,  and 
of  science  and  art :  he  was  learned  in  the  knowledge  of  history, 


146  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARV. 

a  knowledge  rare  among  his  contemporaries.  We  are  even 
told  that  he  had  a  secret  method  of  writing,  which  was 
no  doubt  the  art  of  writing  in  cypher."  He  was  only  nine- 
teen when  he  came  to  the  throne,  but  he  had  already  married 
one  of  the  daughters  of  the  emperor  Charles  IV.  Not- 
withstanding this  family  alliance,  Charles  had  not  given 
Austria  such  a  place  in  the  Golden  Bull  as  seemed  likely  to 
secure  either  her  territorial  importance  or  a  proper  position  for 
her  princes.  They  had  not  been  admitted  into  the  electoral 
college  of  the  empire,  and  yet  their  scattered  possessions 
stretched  from  the  banks  of  the  Lcitha  to  the  Rhine;  three 
dukes  of  Austria  had  filled  the  highest  place  in  the  empire,, 
and  yet  they  were  excluded  from  its  council,  and  were  thrown 
into  the  shade  by  their  old  rival,  the  house  of  Luxemburg. 
These  grievances  were  enhanced  by  their  feeling  of  envy 
towards  Bohemia,  which  had  attained  great  prosperity  under 
Charles  IV.  It  was  at  this  time  that,  in  order  to  increase  the 
importance  of  his  house,  Rudolf  or  his  officers  of  state  had 
recourse  to  a  measure  which  was  often  employed  in  that  age  by 
princes,  religious  bodies,  and  even  by  the  Holy  See.  It  was  pre- 
tended that  there  were  in  existence  a  whole  series  of  charters 
which  had  been  granted  to  the  house  of  Austria  by  various 
kings  and  emperors,  and  which  secured  to  their  princes  a 
position  entirely  independent  of  both  empire  and  emperor. 
According  to  these  documents,  and  more  especially  the  one 
called  \\-\Q.  privilegiiim  majus,  the  duke  of  Austria  owed  no  kind 
of  service  to  the  empire,  which  was,  however,  bound  to  protect 
liim  ;  only  in  case  of  an  expedition  against  Hungary  was  he 
bound  to  furnish  troops,  and  then  only  twehe  knights  ;  he 
was  to  appear  at  the  diets  with  the  title  of  archduke,  awd  was 
to  have  the  first  place  among  the  electors ;  the  prince  might 
dispose  of  the  state  as  he  wished  without  even  consulting  the 
emperor;  he  need  not  go  outside  his  dominions  to  seek  for 
investiture,  but  was  to  receive  it  on  his  own  land,  and  on 
horseback;  no  fief  in  his  lands  could  be  held  by  the  emperor. 
All  these  privileges  were  secured  not  only  to  the  dominions  of 


AUSTRIA    GAIXS   TYROL.  lA^J 

Austria  at  that  time,  but  to  all  lands  they  might  become 
possessed  of  in  the  future.  Rudolf  pretended  that  these 
documents  had  just  come  to  light,  and  demanded  their  con- 
firmation from  Charles  IV.,  who  refused  it.  Nevertheless,  on 
the  strength  of  these  lying  charters,  he  took  the  title  of 
palatine  archduke,  without  waiting  to  ask  the  leave  of  Charles, 
and  used  the  royal  insignia. 

Charles  IV.  who  could  not  fail  to  be  irritated  by  these  pre- 
tensions, in  his  turn  revived  the  claims  which  he  had  inherited 
from  Premysl  Otokar  II.  to  the  lands  of  Austria,  Styria, 
Carinthia,  and  Carniola.  These  claims,  however,  were  simply 
theoretical,  and  no  attempt  was  made  to  enforce  them,  and  the 
mediation  of  Louis  the  Great,  king  of  Hungary,  finally  led  to  a 
treaty  between  the  two  princes,  which  satisfied  the  ambition  of 
the  Habsburgs  (1364).  By  this  treaty,  the  houses  of  Habsburg 
in  Austria  and  of  Luxemburg  in  Bohemia  each  guaranteed  the 
inheritance  of  their  lands  to  the  other,  in  case  of  the  extinction 
of  either  of  the  two  families,  and  the  estates  of  Bohemia  and 
Austria  ratified  this  agreement.  A  similar  compact  was  con- 
cluded between  Austria  and  Hungary,  and  thus  the  boundaries 
of  the  future  Austrian  state  were  for  the  first  time  marked  out. 

Rudolf  himself  gained  little  by  these  long  and  intricate 
negotiations,  Tyrol  being  all  he  added  to  his  territory.  Mar- 
garet Maultasche  had  married  her  son  INIeinhard  to  the 
daughter  of  Albert  the  Wise,  at  the  same  time  declaring  that, 
in  default  of  heirs  male  to  her  son,  Tyrol  should  once  more 
become  the  possession  of  Austria,  and  it  did  so  in  1363. 
Rudolf  immediately  set  out  for  Botzen,  and  there  received  the 
homage  of  the  Tyrolese  nobles.  He  persuaded  Margaret  Maul- 
tasche to  take  up  her  residence  in  Vienna,  in  order  to  secure 
himself  against  any  possible  caprice  on  the  part  of  that 
princess. 

The  acquisition  of  Tyrol  was  most  important  to  Austria.  It 
united  Austria  Proper  with  the  old  possessions  of  the  Habs- 
burgs in  Western  Germany,  and  opened  the  way  to  Italy. 
Margaret  Maultasche  died  at  Vienna  in  1369.     The  memory  of 


148  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

this  restless  and  dissolute  princess  still  survives  among  the 
Tyrolese.  Femina  inexhausta  Ubidmis  et  aiidax,  writes  a  con- 
temporary. She  is  one  of  the  strange  creatures  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  plays  a  part  in  the  national  legends,  somewhat 
similar  to  that  of  Margaret  of  Burgundy.  The  Tyrolese 
peasant  still  believes  that,  on  the  nights  following  the  fasts  of 
the  four  seasons,  the  phantom  of  the  base  gret,  the  wicked  and 
voluptuous  princess,  may  be  seen  among  the  ruins  of  the  old 
castle  of  Neuhaus. 

The  reign  of  Rudolf  IV.,  though  so  full  of  events,  was  but 
short.  He  endeavoured  to  rival  his  father-in-law  Charles  W. 
in  everything,  and  loved  to  say  that  in  his  own  lands  he  would 
be  pope,  emperor,  bishop,  and  dean.  His  home  government 
was  as  able  as  his  foreign  policy.  Though  he  had  falsified 
charters,  he  never  falsified  the  coinage,  a  financial  expedient 
which  was  but  too  much  in  fashion  in  the  Middle  Ages.  He 
imposed  a  tax  on  wine  and  beer,  and  encouraged  trade  and 
manufactures.  On  the  7th  of  April,  1356,  he  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  the  cathedral  of  St.  Stephen  at  Vienna,  one  of  the 
noblest  monuments  of  Gothic  art  in  Germany.  Charles  IV, 
had  founded  the  university  of  Prague ;  Rudolf  instituted  the 
university  of  Vienna  on  the  model  of  that  of  Paris,  and 
endowed  it  with  large  estates  and  numerous  privileges.  This 
university  was  divided  into  four  nations,  the  Austrian,  Rhenish, 
Hungarian,  and  Saxon,  and  from  the  first  had  teachers  of 
renown,  such  as  the  theologians  Henry  of  Langenstein  and 
Henry  of  Ayota. 

Rudolf  died,  in  1365,  at  Milan,  whither  he  had  gone  to 
marry  his  young  brother  Leopold  to  the  sister  of  Bernabo 
Visconti.  He  had  reigned  but  seven  years — one  of  the  shortest 
reigns  of  his  dynasty,  but  also  the  one  most  filled  with  events 
of  importance.  "Of  this  prince,"  says  Cox,  "it  was  justly 
observed  that,  had  he  enjoyed  a  longer  life,  his  splendid 
talents  and  aspiring  mind  would  have  either  occasioned  the 
ruin  of  his  family  or  have  raised  the  house  of  Austria  to  a 
greater  height  than  it  had  ever  before  attained."     By  a  deed 


ALBERT  11'.  149 

of  inheritance  between  himself  and  count  Albert  of  Gorica  he 
had  prepared  the  vv'ay  for  the  annexation  of  the  possessions  of 
that  family  in  Carniola  and  the  march  of  the  A^'ends. 

Rudolf  IV'.  left  no  children.  His  two  brothers,  Albert  with 
the  Plaited  Hair  {a  la  fresse)  and  Leopold  IH.,  called  the 
Pious,  succeeded  him.  Their  tempers  were  so  different  that 
they  could  not  reign  together,  and,  breaking  through  all  the 
traditions  of  their  family,  they  divided  the  hereditary  estates 
(1379).  Albert  kept  Austria,  and  left  Styria,  Carinthia,  the 
Tyrol,  and  the  old  possessions  of  the  Habsburgs  in  Swabia 
and  Alsace  to  Leopold.  The  emperor  Charles  IV.  was  only 
too  glad  to  ratify  a  division  which  could  not  fail  to  weaken 
a  formidable  power.  "We  have  long  laboured,"  he  said, 
"  to  humiliate  the  house  of  Austria,  and,  behold  now,  it  humbles 
itself!" 

The  reign  of  the  first  prince  of  the  Albertine  branch  presents 
no  feature  of  importance.  In  that  of  his  son,  Albert  IV.  (1395- 
1404),  ^Villiam,  the  eldest  son  of  Leopold  III.,  laid  claim  to 
the  administration  of  all  the  Habsburg  domains,  notwithstanding 
the  agreement  between  their  fathers,  and  after  a  long  struggle 
a  new  compact  was  entered  into  by  the  cousins,  by  which 
Albert  kept  Austria  and  even  Carniola,  recognizing  William 
as  co-regent.  Under  Albert  IV.  the  sect  of  the  ^\audois  made 
considerable  progress  in  Austria,  in  spite  of  the  strong 
measures  he  took  against  them.  He  was  a  man  of  great 
piety,  and  liked  to  spend  much  of  his  time  among  the  monks 
of  Marbach.  Some  of  his  contemporaries  give  him  the  name  of 
The  Patient.  In  1400,  he  undertook  a  dangerous  pilgrimage 
to  Palestine,  the  fame  of  which  was  much  noised  abroad, 
and  earned  for  him  the  fanciful  title  of  Mirabilia  Miiiidi. 
He  took  the  part  of  Vacslac  IV.,  king  of  Bohemia,  in  his 
struggles  against  his  enemies,  and  in  return  for  his  help  re- 
ceived from  that  prince  a  ratification  of  the  treaty  of  suc- 
cession entered  into  by  Bohemia  and  Austria  in  the  time  of 
Rudolf.  He  was  equally  successful  in  his  dealings  witii 
Hungary,  from  whose  king  he  obtained  a  similar  convention. 


150  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

He  died  when  on  an  expedition  against  INIoravia,  to  punish 
certain  Moravian  lords  who  had  ravaged  Austrian  territory. 

His  son,  Albert  V.,  was  only  seven  years  old  at  the  time  of 
his  father's  death ;  during  his  minority  the  princes  of  the  Leo- 
poldine  branch  were  his  guardians.  Their  brutal  government 
provoked  serious  discontent  in  Austria,  and  the  nobles  pro- 
claimed the  prince  of  age  when  he  was  only  fourteen.  Albert  V. 
was  a  wise  administrator.  Moreover,  his  marriage  with  Eliza- 
beth, daughter  of  the  emperor  Sigismund,  king  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary  (1422),  secured  to  him  the  possession  of  Moravia, 
which  was  the  dowry  of  that  princess,  and  the  probable  suc- 
cession to  the  thrones  of  both  those  kingdoms.  In  1437,  after 
the  pacification  of  Bohemia,  Sigismund  assembled  the  estates  of 
Bohemia  and  Hungary  and  proposed  duke  Albert  as  his  suc- 
cessor, and  he  was  accepted  by  the  Hungarians  and  by  the 
Catholics  of  Bohemia.  On  the  death  of  his  father-in-law  he 
was  chosen  emperor  under  the  name  of  Albert  II.,  and  thus 
united  the  three  crowns  which  had  been  so  much  coveted  by 
his  family  (1438).  Thenceforth  the  dynasty  of  the  Habsburgs 
was  to  keep  uninterrupted  possession  of  the  imperial  throne. 
The  Albertine  branch  became  extinct  on  the  death  of  Albert's 
son,  Ladislav  the  Posthumous,  duke  of  Austria,  king  of  Bo- 
hemia and  of  Hungary,  in  1457. 

Leopold  the  Pious  (1379-1386),  as  we  have  seen,  had 
obtained,  in  the  division  of  the  Austrian  dominions,  Styria, 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  and  the  Tyrol,  together  with  the  old  family 
possessions  in  Swabia  and  Alsace.  He  rounded  his  domains 
by  several  acquisitions,  only  one  of  which,  the  town  of  Trieste, 
is  of  any  importance  to  Austrian  history.  Weary  of  the 
double  rule  of  the  Venetian  republic  and  the  patriarch  of 
Aquileia,  this  town  voluntarily  sought  the  protection  of 
Leopold  (1382),  only  stipulating  that  he  should  confirm  their 
privileges  and  their  municipal  liberty.  This  acquisition  was 
of  great  importance  to  Austria,  as  it  gave  her  access  to  the 
sea  and  brought  her  nearer  to  North  Italy,  where  she  interfered 
repeatedly  in  the  struggles  between  the  towns  and  the  princes. 


FREDERICK  OF  THE  EMPTY  PURSE.  1  5  I 

All  the  lands  she  was  able  to  gain  which  were  grouped  round 
the  Alps  and  the  Danube  were  destined  to  add  to  her  great- 
ness; while,  on  the  contrary,  those  which  were  far  from  this 
double  centre  she  was  not  long  able  to  retain.  Leopold  had 
some  experience  of  this.  The  Swiss  rose  against  him,  and  he 
lost  both  victory  and  life  at  the  battle  of  Sempach,  which  led 
to  the  independence  of  the  Confederation  (1386). 

After  the  death  of  this  prince  there  was  a  pause  in  the 
development  of  the  power  of  Austria.  The  reigns  of  his 
immediate  successors,  'William  (i 386-1404)  and  Leopold  IV. 
(1386-1411),  have  no  interest  for  us.  On  the  accession  of 
Frederick  IV.  of  the  Empty  Purse  {jnit  der  leeren  Tasche)  the 
dominions  of  the  Leopoldine  branch,  after  several  divisions, 
were  formed  into  two  groups — one  including  Tyrol  and  the 
Vorlcinde  (those,  namely,  in  South-Western  Germany) ;  the 
other,  Styria,  Carinthia,  and  Carniola.  Frederick  settled  him- 
self at  Innsbruck,  and  his  brother  Ernest,  the  Alan  of  I/-o?i,  at 
Gratz.  Ernest  married  Cymburga,  daughter  of  the  Polish  duke 
of  Mazovia.  It  is  said  to  be  from  her  that  the  Habsburgs  have 
inherited  the  thick  protruding  lip,  which  is  as  characteristic  of 
them  as  the  Bourbon  nose  is  of  another  family.  She  was  the 
mother  of  the  emperor  Frederick  IV.  and  grandmother  of 
Maximilian. 

Frederick  of  the  Empty  Purse  (1406-1439) — Frederick  V., 
Einferor  (i 440-1493). 

Frederick  IV.  (1406-1439)  had  to  maintain  a  struggle 
against  the  nobles  of  the  Tyrol,  who  formed  a  strong  league 
against  him  under  the  leadership  of  the  lord  of  Wolkenstein. 
He  sought  aid  against  them  among  the  citizens  and  peasants. 
He  did  his  best  to  remain  at  peace  with  the  Swiss,  but  they 
managed  to  profit  by  his  troubles.  On  his  way  to  the  Council 
of  Constance,  pope  John  XXIII.  had  met  Frederick  at  Meran, 
and  had  then  conferred  on  him  the  title  of  gonfalonier  of  the 
Church.  In  return  for  this  honour  Frederick  helped  the  pope 
in  his  flight  from  Constance,  and  even  offered  him  an  asylum 


152  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

in  his  dominions.  For  this  he  was  i:)laccd  under  the  ban  of 
the  empire  and  excommunicated,  and  the  Swiss,  rising  in 
revolt,  destroyed  the  castle  of  Habsburg.  Frederick  was 
obhged  to  yield.  He  gave  up  John  XXIII.  to  his  enemies,, 
and  was  forced  to  surrender  all  his  domains  and  to  receive  in 
return  from  the  emperor,  as  an  act  of  grace,  just  what  he  chose 
to  restore  to  him.  "You  know  the  power  of  the  dukes  of 
Austria,"  Sigismund  is  said  to  have  exclaimed.  ''  Judge,  then, 
from  what  you  have  seen  what  an  emperor  can  do."  This 
saying  may  be  coupled  with  that  attributed  to  Frnest,  the  Man 
of  Iron  :  "  God  be  with  you,  Habsburg,"  said  the  emperor  to 
him  in  a  contemptuous  tone.  "  Thanks,  Luxemburg,"  replied 
the  Man  of  Iron.  That  Frederick  was  not  deprived  of  the 
Tyrol  was  due  to  his  brother  Ernest,  and  yet  he  had  more  than 
once  to  contend  against  Ernest,  as  the  latter  was  both  ambitious 
and  turbulent.  On  his  death,  in  i4'34,  Frederick  became  the 
guardian  of  his  two  sons,  Frederick  and  Albert,  who  were 
minors  and  who  reigned  together.  Frederick  of  the  Empty 
Purse  died  in  1439.  The  citizens  and  peasants  of  the  Tyrol;, 
to  whom  he  had  granted  many  privileges,  still  reverence  his 
memory.  His  son  Sigismund  (1439-1496)  succeeded  to  his 
Austrian  possessions,  and  his  nephew  Frederick  V.  became 
emperor  in  1440,  under  the  name  of  Frederick  IV.  (1440-1493). 
Frederick  V.  was  the  father  of  Maximilian  and  the  grand- 
father of  Charles  V.  and  of  Ferdinand  of  Austria.  It  is  well 
known  to  what  a  height  of  glory  the  house  of  Austria,  ruler  of 
Europe  and  of  the  New  World,  attained  under  these  princes. 
^^'e  shall  only  notice  here  those  facts  in  the  reign  of  Frederick 
which  belong  to  the  history  of  the  hereditary  states.  He 
created  Austria  an  archduchy ;  he  obtained  possession  of  the 
county  of  Cilly  on  the  death  of  its  count,  Ulric  ;  and  he  gained 
the  right  of  succession  to  the  territories  of  his  house  in  Alsace 
and  Swabia,  as  well  as  the  Tyrol,  for  his  son  Maximilian, 
stipulating  to  pay  in  return  an  annual  sum  to  Sigismund,  the 
son  of  Frederick  of  the  Empty  Purse.  Sigismund  had  assigned 
these  lands  to  the  house  of  Bavaria,  but  Frederick  was  able  to 


FREDERICK    V.  I  53 

interfere  in  time.  Besides  this,  he  acquired  the  town  of  Rieka 
(Fiunie),  which  was  one  day  to  rival  Trieste  on  the  Adriatic. 
"Possessed  of  no  genius  whatever,  but  endowed  with  extra- 
ordinary tenacity  of  purpose,  Frederick  knew  how  to  wait,  and 
also  how  to  outlive  all  his  neighbours  and  all  his  enemies.  It 
was  thus  he  was  able  laboriously  to  unite  the  whole  of  the 
territories  of  the  house  of  Habsburg  and  to  secure  to  his  own 
line  the  almost  unbroken  succession  to  the  imperial  crown  " 
(Himly),  In  his  reign  we  first  meet  with  the  famous  mono- 
gram A.E.I.O.U.  It  is  to  be  found  on  his  pottery,  on  the 
books  of  his  library,  and  on  his  tomb  in  the  church  of  St. 
Stephen.  It  has  been  explained  as  standing  for  the  proud 
phrases,  "  Aquila  Electa  Juste  Omnia  Vincit,"  and  also  "Aus- 
triae  Est  Imperare  Orbi  Universo,"  "  Alles  Erdreich  1st  Oes- 
terreich  Unterthan"  (All  the  earth  is  subject  to  Austria),  and  yet 
again,  "  Aller  Ehren  1st  Oesterreich  VoU  "  (Austria  is  full  of  all 
honour).  The  enemies  of  the  house  of  Austria  have  in  later 
times  interpreted  it  as  '-Austria  Erit  In  Orbe  Ultima." 

The  reign  of  Frederick  was,  however,  not  free  from  trouble. 
Sigismund  of  Tyrol  and  Albert  VI.  of  Styria  (i 435-1 463) 
disputed  with  him  the  possession  of  all  or  part  of  the  Austrian 
domains.  The  citizens  of  Vienna  allied  themselves  with  his 
enemies  and  besieged  him  in  his  own  castle,  whence  he  was 
only  freed  by  the  help  of  the  king  of  Bohemia,  and  after  he 
had  undertaken  to  give  up  Austria  to  Albert  VI.  in  return  for 
a  yearly  sum  of  four  thousand  ducats.  He  did  not  keep  his 
engagements,  and  the  quarrel  broke  out  again,  Avhereupon 
Frederick,  as  emperor,  placed  Vienna  under  the  ban  of  the 
empire,  and  the  pope  issued  an  interdict  against  it.  Notwith- 
standing the  efforts  of  the  pontifical  legate  and  of  George 
Podiebrad,  this  struggle  went  on  till  the  death  of  Albert  VI. 
(1463).  The  insurrection  in  Vienna  was  led  by  a  strange 
personage,  the  catde-merchant  Flolzer,  who  claimed  to  treat 
with  the  emperor  as  an  equal  power.  Holzer  was  in  the  end 
betrayed,  and  died  under  frightful  tortures. 

Later  on,   Frederick  saw  his  dominions   ravaged  by  the 


1 5  4  ins  1  OR  V  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGA  R  V. 

Turks,  who  invaded  Carinthia  and  Carniola,  and  penetrated 
into  Southern  Styria  (1472,  1473,  1493).  These  new  enemies 
i:)roved,  without  knowing  it,  the  best  alUes  possible  for  the 
house  of  Austria,  as  it  was  mainly  owing  to  the  dread  of  their 
invasions  that  the  Slavs  and  Magyars  eventually  submitted  to 
the  common  rule  of  an  hereditary  monarchy. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

BOHEMIA    UNDER   THE    HOUSE   OF    LUXEMBURG — JOHN    HUS 
(1310-1415). 

Jolui  of  Luxemburg  (1310-1346) — Annexation  of  Lusatia 
and  Silesia. 

When  Vacslav  III.  was  assassinated  at  Olomouc,  the  family  of 
the  Premyshdes  became  extinct,  and  Bohemia  has  never  since 
been  ruled  by  a  really  national  dynasty.  It  would  be  rash  to 
affirm  that  his  assassination  had  been  prompted  by  the  house 
•of  Austria,  but  it  is  certain  that  its  representative  neglected 
nothing  which  could  help  it  to  profit  by  the  crime.  The 
emperor  Albert  I.  took  upon  himself  at  once  to  treat  Bohemia 
as  a  mere  fief  of  the  empire,  or  rather  as  a  family  estate,  and 
called  upon  the  nobles  to  elect  his  eldest  son  Rudolf  as  king. 
He  supported  his  claims  by  force  of  arms,  entering  Bohemia 
by  way  of  Thuringia,  while  Rudolf  attacked  it  from  the  side  of 
Moravia,  and  the  nobles  found  themselves  obliged  to  elect 
Rudolf,  and  even  to  promise  (1307)  the  succession  to  his 
brothers  in  the  event  of  his  dying  without  children.  The 
emperor  granted  to  him  and  to  his  brothers  an  investiture 
which  made  all  election  unnecessary,  and  which  seemed 
formally  to  deny  the  right  of  the  nobles  to  dispose  of  the 
crown.  A  minority  of  them,  however,  refused  to  recognize  the 
new  king,  and  he  was  obliged  to  take  up  arms  against  them, 
and  was  killed  while  besieging  the  town  of  Horazdovice(i3o7). 


I  5  6  IIISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-IIUXGAR  \ '. 

On  this  they  refused  to  proclaim  liis  brother  as  his  successor;, 
and  chose  instead  Henry,  duke  of  Carinthia  and  count  of  the 
Tyrol,  who  had  married  Anna,  daughter  of  Vasclav  III.,  and 
so  was  allied  to  the  dynasty  of  the  Premyslides,  whereupon  the 
emperor  Albert  once  more  invaded  Bohemia,  but  was  obliged 
to  retreat  after  being  forced  to  raise  the  siege  of  Kutna  Hora 
(Kuttenberg),  and  his  brother  Frederick  finally  concluded  a 
peace  with  the  king  of  Bohemia. 

Henry  of  Carinthia  did  not  long  remain  in  power ;  he  proved 
himself  an  incapable  ruler,  who  favoured  the  Germans  to  the 
detriment  of  the  nation  and  provoked  revolts.  The  house  of 
Luxemburg  had  lately  attained  the  imperial  power  in  the  person 
of  Henry  of  Luxemburg  (1308),  and  the  Bohemian  nobles  pro- 
ceeded to  offer  the  crown  to  his  son  John  on  condition  that  he 
should  marry  Elizabeth,  the  last  of  king  Vacslav's  daughters. 
The  marriage  was  celebrated  at  Speier  in  13 10,  and  the  emperor 
sent  the  royal  standard  of  Bohemia  to  John  as  a  token  of  in- 
vestiture. Henry  of  Carinthia,  dethroned  by  his  brother-in-law, 
tried  to  resist  with  the  help  of  some  of  the  German  towns,  but 
the  surrender  of  Prague  was  soon  followed  by  the  submission 
of  the  whole  kingdom  to  John.  The  house  of  Luxemburg  re- 
tained possession  of  the  Bohemian  crown  for  one  hundred  and 
twenty-seven  years,  and  did  much  during  this  period  to  bind 
that  country  to  Germany.  It  favoured  the  German  element 
within  the  land,  and  gave  it  a  dangerous  preponderance  in  the 
political  life  of  the  state.  We  shall  have  occasion  to  record 
later  on  how  the  Hussites  tried  to  free  Bohemia  from  their 
hated  rule  by  means  of  a  formidable  revolt. 

For  the  whole  of  his  life  John  was  a  stranger  in  the  land 
of  his  adoption ;  he  learned  to  speak  the  Chekh  language  most 
unwillingly,  and  only  looked  upon  Bohemia  as  a  place  out  of 
which  he  could  get  money.  Passionately  fond  of  gallantry  and 
adventures,  he  was  rather  a  knight-errant  than  a  king,  and  was 
attracted  alternately  by  France  and  Germany,  according  to  the 
caprice  of  the  moment.  His  reign  may  be  divided  into  two 
parts;  the  first  in  which  he  reigned  alone  from  1310  to  1333, 


JOHN  OF  LUXEMBURG.  I  57 

and  the  second  from  1333  to  1346,  when  he  reigned  together 
with  his  son  Charles.  During  the  first  period  the  power  of 
Bohemia  made  rapid  progress  abroad,  while  it  decHned  at 
home ;  the  second  repaired  all  the  mistakes  of  the  first. 

John  of  Luxemburg  was  only  fourteen  years  old  when  he 
began  to  reign,  and  he  was  at  first  assisted  by  his  father  and 
by  Peter  d'Aichspalter,  archbishop  of  jNIaintz.  The  beginning 
of  his  reign  was  fortunate,  for  he  reunited  Moravia  to  Bohemia, 
the  house  of  Austria  having  previously  separated  it  from  that 
country,  as  well  as  Lusatia  and  the  country  of  Goerlitz  ;  and 
he  secured  the  suzerainty  of  Bohemia  over  the  greater  part  of 
Silesia,  including  the  principalities  of  Breslau,  Kozel,  Tesin, 
etc.  Thus  the  kingdom  gained  in  power  abroad,  but  in- 
ternally it  suffered  from  the  prodigality  of  the  king,  and  from 
the  constant  disputes  between  the  queen,  Elizabeth,  the  last 
of  the  Premyslides,  and  the  queen  dowager,  Eliza,  the  Polish 
princess,  who  was  the  widow  of  two  kings. 

The  favour  granted  to  the  Germans  also  led  to  revolts, 
especially  about  the  year  13 18,  when  a  report  was  spread 
abroad  that  the  king  intended  to  drive  all  the  Chekhs  out  of 
the  kingdom,  and  to  people  it  only  with  foreigners.  John, 
discouraged  by  these  various  troubles,  offered  to  exchange  his 
crown  with  Louis  of  Bavaria  for  that  of  the  Palatinate,  and 
was  only  prevented  from  carrying  out  this  project  by  the 
energetic  resistance  of  Queen  Eliza.  Kept  within  narrow 
bounds  at  home,  John  liked  to  interfere  with  all  that  was  going 
on  in  other  countries ;  it  was  considered  a  good  thing  to  ba 
one  of  his  friends,  since  it  was  a  common  saying  of  the  time 
that  nothing  could  succeed  without  the  help  of  God  and  of 
the  king  of  Bohemia.  But  his  great  deeds  were  of  little  use 
to  the  country,  and  she  had  to  pay  dearly  for  them  ;  the  visits 
of  the  sovereign  to  his  kingdom  being  invariably  the  signal  for 
new  taxes,  new  loans,  or  for  fresh  debasement  of  the  coinage. 
Especially  interesting  is  John's  extraordinary  fondness  for 
France.  He  married  his  sister  Maria  to  Charles  IV.  of  France 
in  1322;  he  wished  his  son  Vacslav  (known  in  history  by  the 


1  5  8  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-IIUNGAR ) : 

name  of  Charles)  to  be  educated  in  Paris ;  and  he  married 
his  daughter  Guta  to  John,  the  dauphin  of  France  (1342). 
The  French  chronicler  Guillaume  de  Machaut,  who  was  king- 
John's  clerk,  celebrates  him  as  the  type  of  a  perfect  knight : 

"  II  n'y  eut  paieil  roi,  ni  due,  ni  comte  ; 
Ni  dcpiiis  le  temps  de  Charlemainc 
Ne  flit  horn, — c'est  chose  certaine 
(^)ni  fut  en  tout  cas  plus  parfait, 
En  honneur,  en  dit,  en  fait." 

The  list  of  his  expeditions  is  a  long  one.  He  helped 
Louis  of  Bavaria  in  his  struggles  against  the  Habsburgs  ;  took 
part  in  the  battle  of  INIuhldorf,  and  captured  Frederick,  duke 
of  Austria  (1322),  with  whom,  later  on,  he  became  reconciled; 
and  he  tried  to  secure  the  inheritance  of  tlie  'J'yrol  to  his  son 
John  Henry  by  marrying  him  to  Marguerite  Maultasche 
(1330).  While  he  was  staying  in  the  Tyrol,  the  envoys  of 
ihe  Lombard  towns  implored  his  protection  against  Martin 
della  Scala,  and  John,  in  consequence,  entered  Lombardy  and 
subdued  the  greater  part  of  Northern  Italy.  This  success 
raised  up  enemies  against  him  on  all  sides.  Among  them 
were  the  emperor,  who  considered  the  imperial  rights  over 
Italy  attacked,  the  pope,  and  the  king  of  Naples  his  vicar  in 
Italy ;  indeed,  the  whole  of  Central  Europe,  the  king  of  the 
Romans,  Louis  of  Bavaria,  the  princes  of  Austria,  the  king  of 
Hungary,  and  the  king  of  Poland,  all  united  against  the  king 
of  Bohemia.  But  John  was  able  to  withstand  all  his  enemies. 
He  disarmed  the  emperor  by  undertaking  to  administer  the 
affairs  of  Lombardy  as  the  imperial  vicar.  He  invaded  Poland, 
and,  with  the  help  of  the  Teutonic  knights,  besieged  Posnan 
(Posen).  In  his  struggle  in  Austria,  however,  his  army  was 
defeated  at  Mailberg,  and  he  was  obliged  to  purchase  an 
armistice  (1332). 

He  was  still  less  fortunate  in  Ital}'.  Milan,  Mantua, 
Florence,  and  Naples  entered  into  a  league  against  him,  and, 
notwithstanding  the  victory  gained  by  his  son  Charles  at  San 
Felice,  he  was  obliged  completely  to  evacuate  the  peninsula. 


MISERABLE  STATE   OF  BOHEMIA.  I  59 

after  ruling  over  Lombardy  for  three  years  (1333).  He 
recalled  his  son  and  conferred  upon  him  the  margraviate  of 
Moravia. 

In  1335,  the  death  of  duke  Henry  of  Carinthia  gave  rise 
to  fresh  complications,  as  the  emperor  Louis  proceeded  to 
divide  his  domains,  the  Tyrol,  Carinthia,  and  Carniola,  between 
himself  and  the  duke  of  Austria.  King  John  thereupon  sent 
his  son  Charles  to  the  help  of  Margaret  ISIaultasche,  who 
had  married  his  younger  son,  John  Henry ;  and  the  Tyrol  was 
saved  from  the  imperial  ambition,  though  only  for  a  short 
time,  as  Marguerite  soon  after  repudiated  her  marriage  with 
the  son  of  the  king  of  Bohemia. 

'  A  it"^  years  after  this,  John  was  obliged  to  conclude  a 
treaty  with  Kazimir,  king  of  Poland,  in  order  to  secure  the 
neutrality  of  that  monarch.  By  it  he  renounced  all  claim  to 
the  title  of  king  of  Poland,  while  Kazimir  gave  up  his  to  the 
suzerainty  of  Silesia  (1335). 

John's  various  expeditions  were,  however,  worse  than  use- 
less to  Bohemia.  To  carry  them  on  he  not  only  exhausted 
the  revenues  of  the  crown,  but  was  forced  to  pledge  his 
estates,  till  at  last,  of  all  the  royal  castles,  that  of  Prague  was 
the  only  one  which  he  had  not  mortgaged  to  his  creditors. 
The  royal  authority  fell  into  discredit,  and  the  judicial  power 
of  his  burgraves,  or  governors  of  castles,  came  to  an  end  : 
they  were  no  longer  obeyed,  and  faiistrcciif,  the  reign  of  force, 
prevailed.  But  John  cared  little  for  this.  "When  he  was  not 
fighting  he  was  losing  his  time  over  tournaments.  He  usually 
lived  on  his  hereditary  domain  of  Luxemburg,  or  else  at  the 
court  of  Paris,  where  he  wasted  the  money  which  he  extorted 
from  his  subjects.  During  his  absence  the  country  was 
governed  by  captains,  who  farmed  the  crown  revenues.  The 
queen  Elizabeth  never  accompanied  her  husband,  but  lived 
in  a  solitude  that  was  worse  than  widowhood. 

On  the  death  of  Elizabeth  (1330)  the  hereditary  prince 
Charles  came  to  reside  in  Bohemia.  He  had  been  educated 
at  the  court  of  France,  and  brought  from  tliat  country  ideas 


l6o  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  economy  and  good  government.  He  at  once  set  himself  to 
work  to  restore  order  in  the  finances,  and  succeeded  so  well 
that,  at  the  close  of  1333,  John  associated  him  with  himself  in 
the  government  with  the  title  of  co-regent.  At  this  moment, 
the  war  for  the  domains  of  Henry  of  Carinthia  broke  out,  and 
Margaret  Maultasche,  at  the  instigation  of  the  emperor, 
repudiated  her  husband,  John  Henry,  who  was  Charles's 
brother,  in  order  to  marry  the  margrave  of  Brandenburg.  In 
consequence  of  this,  king  John  declared  war  against  the 
emperor.  He  was  at  first  supported  both  by  the  kings  of 
Poland  and  Hungar}',  and  also  by  the  duke  of  Austria,  but  the 
emperor  soon  deprived  him  of  his  allies.  Silesia  was  next 
invaded  by  Kazimir  of  Poland.  It  was  at  about  this  time  that 
John  was  attacked  by  blindness  j  but,  in  spite  of  that,  he 
pursued  Kazimir,  even  to  the  walls  of  Cracow,  where  he 
forced  him  to  make  peace.  Pope  Clement  VI.  now  interfered, 
and,  as  the  avenger  of  the  Church,  whose  laws  had  been 
broken  by  the  unlawful  divorce  of  Margaret  Maultasche,  called 
upon  the  electors  to  choose  a  new  emperor.  The  three 
ecclesiastical  electors,  the  duke  of  Saxony,  and  the  king  of 
Bohemia  thereupon  chose  the  young  prince  Charles,  who  is 
known  in  German  history  as  Charles  IV.,  but  in  Bohemia  bore 
the  title  of  Charles  I.  (1346). 

John  II.  survived  this  unlooked-for  triumph  of  his  policy 
but  a  short  time.  In  the  year  1337,  when  on  an  expedition 
against  the  i:)agans  of  Lithuania,  he  had  lost  an  eye,  and  in 
1339  he  lost  the  other,  through  the  unskilfulness  of  the 
physicians  of  Montpellier.  But  his  blindness  abated  nothing 
of  his  warlike  ardour.  Hearing  of  the  invasion  of  France  by 
the  English,  he  hastened  to  offer  his  help  to  his  friend  and 
relative,  Philip  of  Valois,  and  his  death  at  the  battle  of  Crecy 
(1346)  is  known  to  everybody.  French  historians  put  into  his 
mouth  the  following  words,  which  he  is  said  to  have  spoken  to 
his  companions-in-arms  : — ''  I  beg  and  earnestly  entreat  that  you 
will  lead  me  so  far  forward  that  I  may  strike  one  blow  with  my 
sword."     The  Chekh  historians  quote  other  words  which,  how- 


CHARLES  IV.  l6l 

•ever,  in  no  wise  contradict  these.  His  companions-in-arms, 
seeing  that  the  day  was  lost,  wished  to  lead  him  from  the  field 
of  battle.  "  Please  God,  a  king  of  Bohemia  shall  never  take 
to  flight,"  the  knightly  king  cried  out.  His  son  Charles  was 
also  wounded  in  the  fight.  John  died  on  the  26th  of  August, 
1346,  the  same  day  of  the  month  on  which  Premysl  Otokar  II. 
had  perished  on  the  field  of  ]\Iarchfeld.  A  Chekh  poem  of  the 
fourteenth  century  celebrates  the  battle  of  Crecy  (Krescak), 
but  in  vague  terms,  which  add  nothing  to  our  previous  know- 
ledge. The  story  which  connects  the  arms  and  motto  of  the 
princes  of  \Vales  with  the  blind  king  of  Bohemia  is  altogether 
without  foundation. 

Charles  IV.  (1346-1378) — Prosperity  of  the  Kingdom — The 
Golden  Bull. 

■  On  the  election  of  Charles  IV.  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the 
Holy  Empire  was  again  to  be  found  in  Central  Europe,  and 
thenceforth  remained  there,  first  in  Bohemia  and  then  in 
Austria,  until  these  two  states  became  united  under  the 
common  rule  of  the  same  sovereign.  German  historians 
judge  Charles  IV.  harshly,  but  those  of  Bohemia  are  full  of 
enthusiasm  for  him,  and  call  him  the  father  of  his  country. 
John  of  Luxemburg  had  left  him  plenty  to  do,  and  Charles 
applied  himself  energetically  to  do  it.  It  was  first  needful  to 
put  in  order  the  crown  revenues  and  release  the  domains  from 
mortgage.  This  done,  he  reorganized  the  administration  of 
justice,  suppressed  brigandage,  improved  trade  and  commerce, 
and  divided  his  kingdom  into  twelve  circles.  The  beginning  of 
his  reign  was  marked  by  the  foundation  of  the  university  of 
Prague  (1348),  the  first  in  Central  Europe,  and  second  only  to 
that  of  Paris  in  the  whole  of  Europe.  Its  first  chancellor  was 
Ernest  of  Pardubitz  (Pardubice),  the  celebrated  archbishop. 
According  to  the  custom  of  the  time,  it  was  divided  into  four 
nations — the  Chekh,  Polish,  Bavarian,  and  Saxon.  A  large 
number  of  Germans  were  attracted  to  Prague  by  it,  and  they 
gradually  gained  more  than  their  due  share  of  influence  in  it, 


1 62  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO- HUN  GARY. 

especially  after  the  foundation  of  the  university  of  Cracow,  since 
from  that  time  onward  the  Polish  7iation  was  composed  entirely 
of  Germans  from  Silesia.  Thus  the  Chekhs  were  outweighed 
by  foreigners  from  an  early  date.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that,  though  the  fourteenth  century  was  a 
golden  age  for  the  Germans  in  Bohemia,  they  made  little  use 
of  it  for  the  improvement  of  their  own  literature ;  they  pro- 
duced no  original  works,  and  very  little  more  than  translations 
from  the  Chekh.  Thanks  to  this  foundation  of  the  university, 
Prague  became  an  intellectual  centre,  not  only  for  Bohemia, 
but  also  for  Germany,  Hungary,  and  Poland,  the  universities 
of  Vienna  and  Cracow  not  being  yet  in  existence. 

Charles  IV.  was  an  enlightened  protector  of  the  fine  arts^ 
and  adorned  Prague  with  buildings  which  are  its  pride  to  this 
day.  He  rebuilt  the  cathedral  of  St.  Vit  after  the  pattern  of 
the  Gothic  buildings  of  France  ;  its  first  architect  was  Mathias 
of  Arras,  a  Frenchman.  He  also  built  the  celebrated  stone 
bridge  of  Prague,  one  of  the  finest,  perhaps  the  finest,  in 
Europe  ;  the  royal  castle  of  Prague,  "  with  the  roofs  of  gold," 
on  the  model  of  the  old  castle  of  the  Louvre ;  and  the  castle 
of  Karlstein,  in  the  environs  of  Beroun,  in  which  were  to  be 
kept  the  royal  insignia  and  the  crown  of  St.  Vacslav.  The  first 
school  of  painting  which  we  hear  of  in  the  Middle  Ages 
flourished  in  the  Bohemian  capital  in  this  reign ;  some  works 
of  this  school  still  remain.  Charles  paid  equal  attention  to  the 
police  of  his  kingdom,  and  drew  up,  under  the  title  oi  Majesios 
Carolina,  a  kind  of  code,  which  he  submitted  to  the  diet  of  the 
nobles  (1355).  But  this  diet,  little  anxious  to  restrain  abuses 
by  which  its  members  profited,  refused  to  adopt  the  Majestas. 
It  consented,  however,  to  some  important  reforms — among 
others,  to  the  abolition  of  trials  by  ordeal ;  and  it  recognized 
the  right  of  the  peasant  to  summon  his  lord  before  a  court  of 
justice.  In  other  respects,  Charles  made  important  improve- 
ments in  the  administration  of  justice.  He  made  special  laws 
for  the  relations  between  vassals  and  lords,  and  increased  the 
privileges  of  the  townsfolk,  giving  them  the  right,  independent 


THE    GOLDEN  BULL.  163 

of  the  diet,  of  making  regulations  for  their  internal  government, 
in  some  cases  each  town  for  itself,  in  others  in  assemblies  of 
town  deputies.  At  the  same  time  the  inhabitants  of  Chekli 
towns  were  admitted  by  him  to  those  privileges  which  had 
hitherto  been  conferred  only  on  German  colonists. 

The  same  diet  which  had  rejected  the  Majestas  Carolina 
joined  Charles  in  fixing  the  order  of  succession  in  the  dynasty 
of  Luxemburg,  and  in  definitely  establishing  that  principle  of 
primogeniture  which  had  already  been  the  custom  in  the 
Premyslide  dynasty.  Moravia,  Silesia,  Upper  Lusatia,  Bran- 
denburg which  had  been  acquired  from  the  margrave  Otto,^ 
and  the  county  of  Glatz  (Kladsko),  with  the  consent  of  the 
diets  of  these  provinces,  were  declared  integral  and  inalienable 
portions  of  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia.  The  see  of  Prague  was 
created  an  archbishopric,  and  thus  made  independent  of  the 
foreign  diocese  of  Maintz.  At  the  same  time  a  monastery 
was  established  at  Prague,  at  which  a  Slavonic  liturgy  was  to 
be  regularly  used.  From  this  monastery  came  the  celebrated 
manuscript  w^hich  was  carried  to  Rheims,  and  known  there  as 
the  Consecration  Gospel,  being  the  one  on  which  for  two 
centuries  the  kings  of  France  took  the  coronation  oath. 

By  the  Golden  Bull,  Charles  IV.  established  the  public  law 
of  Germany.  He  did  not  forget  the  interests  of  Bohemia  in 
this  celebrated  act.  In  it  the  king  of  Bohemia  is  spoken  of  as 
one  of  the  seven  electors  of  the  Holy  Empire,  but  it  is  stated 
the  kingdom  is  in  no  wise  to  be  considered  as  a  fief  of  the 
empire.  It  goes  on  to  declare  that  the  king  of  Bohemia  can 
only  be  chosen  by  the  nobles  of  the  country,  and  not  by  the 
emperor,  and  that  his  subjects  are  free  from  all  foreign  juris- 
diction, and  even  forbids  them  to  appeal  to  any  foreign 
authority.  One  passage  in  the  bull,  which  is  but  little  known, 
shows  how  much  importance  Charles  attached  to  the  Slav 
nationality  and  language  of  Bohemia.  It  is  as  follows  : — "  It 
is  right  that  the  majesty  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  should 

'  For  Brandenburg  during  this  perioil,  sec  Carlylc,  Frederick,  bk.  ii. 
chs.  12,  13. 


1 64  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGAIiY. 

ordain  laws  and  govern  people  of  divers  nations  and  of  different 
manners  and  tongues.  It  is  right  that  the  prince  electors,  Avho 
are  the  pillars  of  the  empire,  should  have  a  knowledge  of 
different  languages,  their  business  being  to  support  the  emperor 
in  weightier  matters.  Therefore  we  order  that  the  daughters 
and  the  heirs  of  the  king  of  Bohemia,  the  count-palatine  of  the 
Rhine,  the  duke  of  Saxony,  and  the  margrave  of  Brandenburg, 
who  must  know  German  from  having  learned  it  in  their 
infancy,  shall,  from  the  age  of  seven,  learn  the  Latin,  Italian, 
and  Slav  tongues,  in  such  a  manner  as  that  by  the  age  of 
fourteen  they  shall  have  mastered  them." 

Chekh  literature  flourished  as  we  might  expect  under  the 
reign  of  Charles  iV.  It  produced  knightly  romances,  satirical 
and  elegiac  poems,  chronicles,  and  some  dramatic  attempts. 

Charles  had  concluded  in  1366  a  treaty  of  inheritance  with 
Austria,  in  virtue  of  which  that  one  of  the  houses  of  Luxemburg 
and  Habsburg  which  survived  the  other  was  to  take  possession 
of  both  Austria  and  Bohemia.  In  order  to  secure  the 
inheritance  of  Bohemia  and  the  empire  to  his  own  family,  he 
had  had  his  eldest  son  Vacslav  crowned  king  of  Bohemia  in 
1363,  and  obtained  his  election  as  king  of  the  Romans  in 
1376.  Before  his  death  he  divided  his  possessions  among  his 
four  sons.  To  the  eldest,  he  gave  Bohemia,  Silesia,  and  the 
domains  in  Bavaria,  Saxony,  and  Germany ;  to  the  others, 
Brandenburg,  the  country  of  Gorlitz,  and  part  of  Moravia. 
He  died  in  1378,  on  the  eve  of  the  religious  movement  of 
which  he  must  have  seen  the  first  symptoms,  and  which  was 
destined  to  have  so  great  an  effect  on  Bohemian  history. 

Vacslav  IV.  (1378 — 14 19) — Revolts  of  the  Arables — Religions 
Troubles. 

The  glory  of  the  reign  of  Charles  was  heightened  by  the 
fact  that  those  of  his  predecessor  and  his  successor  were  both 
unhappy  reigns  for  Bohemia.  His  father  was  a  crowned 
adventurer;  his  son,  Vacslav  IV.  (1378 — .1419),  has  received 
the  names  of  the  Sluggard  and  the  Drunkard.     This  young 


VACSL.ir  //'.  165 

prince  was  endowed  with  some  good  qualities,  and  his  accession 
had  filled  both  the  empire  and  Bohemia  with  the  brightest 
hopes.  But  he  was  weak  and  yet  violent,  and  his  lot  was 
cast  in  critical  times  ;  an  epoch  when  the  old  institutions  of 
Christianity  began  to  crumble  to  pieces,  and  when  the  thoughts 
of  men  were  in  a  state  of  fermentation  which  threatened  the 
destruction  of  the  old  bonds  which  had  hitherto  enchained 
them.  This  reign  coincides  with  two  great  events  in  religious 
history — the  great  schism,  and  the  reform  of  John  Hus. 

Vacslav  was  only  seventeen  when  he  succeeded  his  father. 
At  this  time  he  was  very  far  from  being  such  a  monster  as  he 
is  represented  in  legendary  history.  His  education  had  been 
much  neglected.  Pie  was  a  drunkard,  and  he  had  an  extrava- 
gant fondness  for  the  chase  and  for  dogs.  His  first  wife,  they 
say,  was  torn  to  pieces  by  one  of  his  dogs,  and  this  terrible 
accident  gave  Vacslav  a  reputation  for  pitiless  ferocity.  He 
was  also  careless  in  his  behaviour  towards  the  nobles  and 
clergy,  and  often  bestowed  the  offices  of  his  court  on  citizens 
or  on  simple  knights,  or  even  on  servants  of  his  household  or 
stables,  and  this  it  is  which  explains  the  animosity  of  the  clergy 
and  nobles  against  him,  while  it  also  was  the  cause  of  a  certain 
amount  of  popularity  which  he  had  among  the  lower  classes. 
In  his  time  Bohemia,  owing  to  her  family  alliances,  might  have 
played  a  most  important  part  in  Europe.  His  brother  Sigis- 
mund  was  elected  king  of  Hungary  (1387);  his  sister  Anne 
married  king  Richard  of  England,  and  he  himself  was  in 
friendly  alliance  with  the  court  of  France.  His  reign,  however, 
began  badly.  He  excited  the  clergy  against  him  by  his  violent 
behaviour  towards  some  of  the  highest  ecclesiastics  in  his 
kingdom,  the  most  noteworthy  example  being  his  attack  in 
1393  upon  the  archbishop  of  Prague,  John  of  Janstein  (from 
whom  he  demanded  the  surrender  of  one  of  his  castles),  and 
upon  the  archbishop's  vicars-general,  Puchnik  and  John  of 
Pomuk.  The  latter  he  caused  to  be  tortured  and  thrown  into 
the  Mtava,  though  his  only  crime  was  that  he  had  resisted 
the  royal  will  in  an  ecclesiastical  matter.     In  the  seventeenth 


1 66  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-JWNGARY. 

century,  v.'hen  Bohemia  had  been  crushed  and  the  CathoUc 
faith  restored,  a  myth  concerning  this  St.  John  Nepomucen 
was  concocted,  in  which  he  was  said  to  have  been  martyred 
rather  than  betray  the  secrets  of  the  confessional,  and  his 
name  and  worship  were  substituted  for  those  of  John  Hus,  in 
an  attempt  to  drive  the  latter  from  the  memory  of  the  people. 
Modern  criticism  has,  however,  completely  destroyed  this 
legend,  and  it  can  no  longer  hold  its  ground. 

Many  of  the  nobles,  irritated  by  the  violence  of  Vacslav, 
and  by  the  influence  possessed  by  his  unworthy  favourites 
{g>-atiarii),  entered  into  a  league  against  him.  They  said  they 
united  to  restore  the  constitution  of  the  land,  which  had  been 
violated  by  the  king  and  his  counsellors,  but  their  real  aim 
was  the  augmentation,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  maintenance,  of  the 
privileges  of  their  order.  One  of  their  demands  was  that 
certain  offices  should  only  be  confided  to  persons  of  the  rank 
of  lord,  unless  a  special  agreement  should  be  entered  into  by 
the  king,  the  lords,  and  the  knights.  They  secured  the  assist- 
ance of  the  king  of  Hungary  and  the  margrave  Jost  of 
Moravia,  and  when  Vacslav  resisted  their  demands  they  made 
him  a  prisoner  in  his  royal  castle  at  Prague  (1394),  and  forced 
him  to  sign  what  amounted  to  an  act  of  abdication,  by  which 
his  cousin  Jost  was  appointed  regent,  or  staroste,  of  the  king- 
dom. But  Vacslav's  brother  John,  duke  of  Gorlitz,  soon  came 
to  his  assistance,  and,  with  the  help  of  the  small  landowners  and 
the  inhabitants  of  the  towns,  resisted  the  rebels  with  energy, 
whereupon  these  latter  fled  with  their  prisoner  to  the  south  of 
Bohemia,  and  even  carried  him  into  Austria.  He  did  not 
obtain  his  freedom  till  the  following  year,  and  in  the  interval 
both  the  king  of  Hungary  and  the  margrave  of  Moravia  inter- 
fered in  the  affairs  of  the  kingdom,  the  latter  becoming  its  real 
ruler  in  1396. 

The  year  following,  he  was  driven  away,  and  Vacslav,  who 
had  obtained  his  freedom,  began  again  to  reign  with  the 
help  of  another  of  his  cousins,  Procopius  of  Moravia.  In 
1398,   he  went  to   France,  where  he  had  an    interview  with 


RELIGIOUS  MOVEMENT  AMONG    THE   CHEKHS.       1 6/ 

Charles  VI.,  king  of  P'rance,  at  Rheims,  to  consider  the  great 
schism  which  then  divided  Rome  and  Avignon.  On  his 
return  to  Germany,  he  found  that,  on  the  instigation  of  pope 
Benedict  IX.,  the  electors  had  risen  against  him.  In '1400, 
Rupert,  the  elector  palatine,  was  chosen  emperor  by  the  three 
ecclesiastical  electors.  He  proceeded  to  declare  war  against 
Bohemia,  and  German  troops  penetrated  to  the  very  walls 
of  Prague.  The  city  defended  itself  bravely,  and  Vacslav  was 
able  at  least  to  keep  his  kingdom,  though,  truth  to  tell,  he  had 
nothing  but  the  title  of  king.  Incapable  himself  of  governing, 
he  had  been  obliged  to  seek  help  from  his  brother  Sigismund, 
king  of  Hungary,  who  treated  him  in  no  very  brotherly  fashion, 
for  he  kept  him  a  prisoner  in  his  palace  at  Prague,  and  with 
him  the  margrave  Procopius,  who  sought  to  defend  the  rights  of 
Vacslav.  Later  on,  he  carried  them  both  to  Vienna,  where  he 
confided  them  to  the  keeping  of  the  Austrian  princes.  Part  of 
Bohemia,  however,  refused  to  obey  a  foreign  king,  and  Vacslav 
managed  to  escape  from  his  Austrian  prison,  and  in  1402 
again  returned  to  his  capital. 

Respect  for  authority  must  have  been  much  diminished 
among  the  people  by  the  sight  of  these  perpetual  struggles 
between  the  royal  families  and  the  indignities  suffered  by 
crowned  heads.  At  the  same  time  their  faith  in  the  authority 
of  the  church  had  been  seriously  shaken  by  the  scandal 
created  in  the  whole  Christian  world  by  the  existence  of  the 
two  popes,  one  at  Rome  and  one  at  Avignon.  The  corrup- 
tion among  the  clergy  was  frightful.  "  Among  the  priests," 
says  Andrew  de  Cesky  Brod,  a  contemporary,  "  there  is  no 
discipline  ;  among  the  bishops  there  is  open  simony ;  among 
the  monks  countless  disorders  ;  and  among  the  laymen  there 
is  no  abuse  in  practice  which  has  not  been  the  habit  of  the 
clergy  before  them."  Besides  all  this,  the  Chekhs  were  in- 
dignant at  the  influence  which  the  Germans  continued  to  gain 
in  the  kingdom.  The  peasants  began  to  find  the  weight  of 
servitude  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  especially  when  it  was  im- 
posed upon  them  by  foreign  masters,  and  the  disturbance  in 


1 68  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARV. 

all  men's  minds  Avas  heightened  by  the  feebleness  of  the 
monarch.  A  revolution  was  inevitable.  In  the  Middle  Ages, 
religion  was  the  strongest  interest.  The  revolution  broke  out 
in  the  world  of  religious  ideas,  and  John  Hus  was  its  hero. 

The  great  preachers,  Conrad  "Waldhauser  and  Milic  of 
Moravia,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  IV.,  had  prepared  the  way  for 
the  religious  movement  to  which  the  name  of  Hus  is  attached. 
Both  these  men  had  preached  reform  of  manners  and  of  the 
church.  Conrad  had  attacked  the  monks  and  their  super- 
stitious practices.  Among  other  things  he  had  said,  "  Give 
to  the  poor,  and  not  to  the  monks ;  they  are  well  off,  big 
and  fat,  and  have  more  than  they  need  for  their  wants.'^ 
Milic  had  dared  even  to  attack  the  pope  and  the  cardinals. 
The  priests,  whose  scandalous  lives  they  reproved,  replied 
with  accusations  of  heresy.  Milic  was  obliged  to  go  to 
Avignon  to  clear  himself,  and  died  there  in  1374.  One  of 
his  most  remarkable  pupils  was  the  theologian  Mathias  of 
Janov,  who  also  endeavoured  to  bring  the  clergy  back  to  a 
sense  of  their  duty,  and  attacked  as  Antichrist  those  who 
brought  lying  fables  into  the  church — "  Antichristus  est  omnis 
c[ui  mentitur  et  fabulas  in  sanctam  ecclesiam  introducit."  He 
accused  the  pope  and  the  bishops  of  having  broken  through 
the  traditions  of  the  primitive  church,  and  of  thinking  only  of 
temporal  advantages.  The  austere  morality  of  these  preachers 
is  also  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  some  of  the  laymen  ; 
as,  for  example,  in  those  of  the  knight  Thomas  of  Stitny, 
especially  in  his  book  called  "  The  Christian  Republic  ; "  and 
even  in  the  didactic  poems  of  Flaska  of  Pardubice.  Numerous 
passages  from  the  Bible  had  also  by  this  time  been  translated 
into  the  Chekh  language,  and  had  helped  the  people  to  begin 
to  reason  for  themselves  in  religious  matters. 

The  development  of  the  national  literature  had  roused  in 
men's  minds  a  wish  to  throw  off  the  supremacy  which  the 
Cermans  had  acquired  throughout  the  country.  The  towns 
were  full  of  these  foreigners.  In  the  churches  and  schools  their 
language  took  the  place  of  the  national  tongue  ;  and  there  were 


JOIIX  HI'S.  169 

even  cases  ^vhere  ecclesiastical  functions  were  entrusted  to 
Germans,  who  did  not  understand  the  language  of  their  flocks. 
John  Hus  gave  utterance  to  all  the  moral  needs  of  his  time  : 
as  priest,  he  brought  the  Divine  words  home  to  the  people  in 
their  own  language,  and  preached  the  reform  of  the  church ;  as 
patriot,  he  aimed  at  freeing  the  Bohemian  nation  from  the 
intellectual  oppression  of  a  German  minority.  Till  the  time  of 
Luther  no  reformer  ever  again  exercised  so  great  an  influence 
over  a  nation. 

John  jT/z^  (1369-1415) — The  Council  of  Consfa?ice  {ij^is). 

John  Hus  was  born  in  1369,  at  Husinec,  in  the  south 
of  Bohemia.  He  Avas  a  Master  of  Arts  and  Bachelor  of 
Theology.  He  had  deeply  studied  the  writings  of  John 
Wycliffe,  the  Englishman  who  had  been  condemned  by  the 
court  of  Rome,  and  who  aimed  at  restoring  to  the  church  the 
purity  of  her  early  days.  He  was  one  of  the  professors  in  the 
university  of  Prague,  where  in  1402  he  became  dean,  and 
preacher  in  the  chapel  of  Bethlehem,  where  the  sermons  were 
always  preached  in  Chekh.  An  upright  man,  and  zealous  in  the 
performance  of  his  duties,  he  stood  so  high  in  public  estima- 
tion, and  even  in  that  of  the  court,  that  queen  Sophia,  the 
second  wife  of  king  Vacslav,  appointed  him  her  confessor. 
His  sermons  on  the  abuses  of  the  church  found  an  echo  in  the 
hearts  of  the  numerous  listeners  who  thronged  to  them.  His 
adversaries  were  unable  to  refute  his  charges,  but  accused  him 
of  the  Wycliflite  heresies.  By  attacking  them  they  hoped  to 
attack  him,  and  in  1403,  at  the  request  of  the  chapter  of 
Prague,  forty-five  propositions,  taken  from  the  works  of  Wycliffe, 
were  condemned  by  the  university  of  Prague. 

John  Hus  and  his  followers  would  not  agree  to  this 
decision.  They  maintained  that  the  errors  attributed  to 
Wycliffe  either  did  not  exist  in  his  writings,  or  else  had  re- 
ceived a  ^wrong  interpretation.  In  140S,  at  their  suggestion, 
a  meeting  was  held  of  the  Bohemian  nation  of  the  university 


I/O  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  Prague,  at  which  the  forty-five  articles  were  discussed,  and, 
notwithstanding  the  previous  decision  in  the  assembly  of  the 
four  nations,  the  Chekh  nation  then  declared  that  the  state- 
ments in  question  were  to  be  found  in  Wycliffe's  writings,  but 
that  they  need  not  be  interpreted  in  any  heretical  sense.  This 
declaration  was  considered  by  archbishop  Zbynek  as  an  act 
of  formal  disobedience ;  he  ordered  that  all  the  known  copies 
of  Wycliffe's  works  should  be  submitted  to  a  fresh  examina- 
tion, and,  soon  after,  had  a  large  number  of  them  burnt.  About 
the  same  time  Hus  was  denounced  before  the  archbishop  on 
account  of  the  vehemence  of  his  preaching. 

In  the  year  1409,  a  general  council  was  held  at  Pisa  in 
order  to  put  an  end  to  the  schism  of  Avignon.  Those 
cardinals  who  had  been  most  active  in  obtaining  this  council 
hoped  not  only  to  restore  unity  in  the  church,  but  also  to  bring 
about  reforms  "in  head  and  in  members."  In  obedience  to 
the  decision  of  the  council,  king  Vacslav  called  upon  the  clergy 
of  his  kingdom  to  acknowledge  the  Roman  pontiff,  Gregory  XII., 
and  when  archbishop  Zbynek,  together  with  the  higher  clergy, 
refused  to  obey,  Vacslav  consulted  the  university  on  this  grave 
question.  The  university  was  divided,  the  Chekh  nation  alone 
deciding  in  favour  of  the  king  and  the  cardinals,  John  Hus  and 
his  friends  having  a  majority  among  them.  Thus  we  see  the 
arch-heretic  Hus  on  the  side  of  the  Roman  church,  while  her 
own  representative,  the  archbishop,  declared  against  her.  It 
was  not  only  with  the  people  that  John  Hus  had  acquired 
influence,  but  also  with  the  king  and  court.  Vacslav  had  never 
been  on  very  good  terms  with  the  higher  clergy  of  his  kingdom, 
and  the  greater  number  of  his  favourites  from  interested 
motives  looked  upon  the  proposed  reforms  with  favour.  The 
reformers  declared  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  deprive  the 
church  of  the  greater  part  of  her  possessions  in  order  to  restore 
to  the  clergy  the  purity  of  primitive  times,  and  it  was  supposed 
that  when  once  these  possessions  were  secularized  the  king 
would  be  able  to  divide  them  among  his  followers.  In  this 
way,  passions  which  were  most  foreign  to  the  religious  ideal 


INFLUENCE   OF  HUS.  IJI 

he  aimed  at  secured  for  Hus  and  his  party  the  support  of  the 
court  and  sovereign. 

He  seized  this  favourable  opportunity  to  restore  to  the 
Chekh  nation  the  position  which  was  due  to  it  in  the  uni- 
versity. He  represented  to  the  king  the  injustice  of  giving  to 
foreigners  influence  which  entirely  crushed  that  of  the  natives 
—  influence  which  made  itself  felt  not  only  on  doctrinal 
questions,  but  also  in  all  university  appointments  and  offices. 
'•'  The  Chekhs,"  he  said,  "  ought  to  be  first  in  the  kingdom  of 
Bohemia,  as  the  French  are  in  France  and  the  Germans  in 
Germany.  The  laws  of  the  land,  the  will  of  God,  and  natural 
instinct  demand  that  they  should  receive  all  the  highest  offices.'' 
Vacslav  listened  to  his  advice,  and  decreed  that  in  future  the 
Chekh  nation  should  have  three  votes  and  the  foreigners  only 
one  in  all  councils  and  elections.  The  German  masters  and 
students  in  consequence  quitted  the  town  of  Prague  in  a  body 
(1409),  and  proceeded  to  found  the  university  of  Leipsic. 
They  considered  themselves  injured  in  their  lawful  rights 
directly  they  were  no  longer  permitted  to  be  masters  in  a 
country  which  belonged  to  others.  They  have  since  had  their 
revenge  on  the  university  of  Prague,  for  at  the  present  time 
they  have  again  taken  almost  complete  possession  of  it,  not- 
withstanding the  protests  of  the  Chekhs. 

This  energetic  measure  on  the  part  of  king  \'acslav  rendered 
obedience  to  the  decrees  of  the  council  of  Pisa  much  more  easy 
throughout  the  kingdom,  and  the  council  in  return  recognized 
Vacslav  as  king  of  the  Romans.  This  proved,  however,  but 
an  idle  compliment,  as  the  electors,  taking  no  heed  of  the 
action  of  the  council,  proceeded  to  choose  Sigismund  king  of 
Hungary  (1410).  Meantime  archbishop  Zbynek,  in  no  wise 
discouraged  by  the  triumph  of  John  Hus,  who  had  been 
appointed  rector  of  the  reformed  university,  placed  him  under 
an  interdict,  and  the  city  of  Prague  with  him.  Hus  thereupon 
appealed  to  the  Holy  See,  and  the  pope  suspended  the  inter- 
dict until  Hus  should  have  had  time  to  defend  himself  against 
the  charges  brought  against  him.     Zbynek,  dreading  the  anger 


172  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

of  Vacslav,  fled  to  his  rival,  Sigisinund  of  Hungary,  and,  falling 
ill  on  the  way,  died  at  Poszony  (Presburg)  in  141 1. 

The  council  of  Pisa,  in  order  to  put  an  end  to  the  schism, 
had  set  aside  both  the  pope  at  Rome  and  the  one  at  Avignon, 
and  had  chosen  a  new  pontiff,  Alexander  V.  Thus,  for  a  short 
time,  there  were  three  popes  all  reigning  at  once.  Alexander  Y. 
might  have  been  the  restorer  of  the  church,  but  he  lived  but  a 
very  short  time,  and  his  successor,  John  XXIII.,  had  neither 
the  qualities  nor  the  virtues  necessary  for  a  reforming  pope. 
Hus  continued  to  preach  with  all  his  accustomed  ardour,  and, 
hopeless  of  accomplishing  the  reform  of  the  whole  church,  he 
turned  all  his  efforts  towards  the  church  of  Bohemia.  Although 
he  had  been  forbidden  to  preach  in  the  Bethlehem  chapel,  he 
held  his  ground  against  not  only  the  bishop,  but  the  pope 
himself,  and,  developing  the  theories  of  Wyclifife,  he  denied 
the  right  attributed  to  the  pope  as  the  visible  head  of  the 
church.  Just  at  this  time  the  papacy  supplied  him  Avith  arms 
against  itself.  In  1412,  pope  John  XXIII.,  attacked  by  the 
king  of  Naples,  who  had  embraced  the  cause  of  his  dethroned 
predecessor,  Gregory  XII,,  caused  a  crusade  to  be  preached 
for  the  defence  of  the  Holy  See,  and  promised  plenary  indul- 
gence to  all  those  believers  who  should  come  to  his  aid  either 
with  arms  or  money.  Hus  and  his  adherents  loudly  denounced 
this  trade  in  indulgences  both  in  public  discussions  and  from 
the  pulpit,  and  the  excited  people  violently  attacked  even 
priests  of  the  highest  rank.  The  preachers  of  indulgences 
were  interrupted  in  the  church  itself  by  the  (questions  of  their 
hearers.  Three  of  the  rioters  were  seized  by  the  consuls  of 
the  old  town  and  beheaded,  but  far  from  being  terrified  by  this 
severe  measure,  the  jDopulace  got  possession  of  their  bodies, 
and  placed  them,  as  the  relics  of  martyrs,  in  the  chapel  of 
Bethlehem.  John  XXIII.  now  pronounced  an  anathema 
against  Hus,  and  placed  any  town  in  which  he  might  reside 
under  an  interdict,  and  the  king,  alarmed,  himself  besought 
Hus  to  leave  Prague.  But,  welcomed  in  the  castles  of  the 
national  nobility,  the    INIaster  found  among  the  country  folk 


COUXCIL   OF  COySTAXCE.  173 

<i  docile  and  enthusiastic  audience  ;  and  from  the  depths  of 
his  seckision  he  pul^Hshed  controversial  works  which  were  all 
the  more  eagerly  read  because  he  was  a  master  of  the  Slav 
tongue,  as  well  as  a  thorough  reformer.  It  was  not  without 
terror  that  king  Yacslav  saw  his  doctrines  spreading  through- 
out Bohemia,  which  was  at  this  time  described  by  the  pope 
and  the  Holy  See  as  the  hot-bed  of  heresy.  He  made  great 
but  unavailing  efforts  to  restrain  the  ardour  of  John  Hus,  and 
to  bring  about  a  reconciliation  between  him  and  Albic,  the 
new  archbishop  of  Prague." 

Meantime  the  sale  of  indulgences  had  not  procured  for  the 
pope  the  wished-for  assistance.  Driven  from  Rome  by  the  king 
of  Naples,  he  had  been  obliged  to  take  refuge  at  Bologna,  and 
in  this  critical  situation  of  affairs  he  comforted  himself  with  the 
idea  of  a  general  council,  which  should  come  to  the  help  of 
the  ills  of  the  church  and  the  needs  of  the  Holy  See.  In  an 
interview  which  he  had  with  the  emperor  Sigismund  at  Lodi,  it 
was  decided  such  a  council  should  be  summoned,  and  that  the 
place  of  meeting  should  be  the  town  of  Constance.  King 
Vacslav  thought  he  saw  in  this  council  the  only  means  of 
putting  an  end  to  the  religious  troubles  of  Bohemia,  which  were 
causing  the  greatest  embarrassment  to  his  vacillating  mind.  The 
emperor  invited  John  Hus  to  come  to  Constance,  under  the 
protection  of  an  imperial  safe-conduct,  to  defend  his  doctrines. 
The  Master,  as  he  was  called  by  his  countrymen,  was  not  the 
man  to  draw  back  from  such  an  invitation  ;  he  believed  him- 
self so  surely  in  the  possession  of  the  truth  that  he  must  be 
able  to  convert  his  adversaries,  and  in  his  enthusiasm  he  was 
ready  to  defend  it  to  the  death.  He  arrived,  accompanied  by 
an  escort  of  Bohemian  knights  granted  to  him  by  king  Vacslav, 
expecting  to  find  in  the  council  a  fair  field,  where  he  would 
be  allowed  to  fight  his  opponents  with  equal  weapons.  He 
believed  in  the  imperial  safe-conduct.  The  council  cared 
nothing  for  it,  looking  upon  it  as  an  illegal  encroachment  by  the 
temporal  on  the  spiritual  power,  and  the  emperor  Sigismund 
protested  but  feebly  against  its  violation. 


1/4  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

It  was  not  long  after  his  arrival  at  Constance  that  Has  was 
thrown  into  prison,  in  order  that  he  might  be  tried  as  a  heretic 
and  a  disturber  of  the  discipline  of  the  church.  The  first  steps 
of  the  trial  were  taken  secretly,  but  Hus  was  afterwards  allowed 
to  defend  himself  before  the  council.  Many  of  the  charges 
brought  against  him  were  false.  In  his  defence  he  did  not 
break  openly  with  Catholicism,  though  he  defended  principles 
which  led  him  to  deny  the  authority  of  the  pope,  and  placed 
that  of  the  Scriptures  above  that  of  the  church.  On  hearing 
this,  the  council  refused  to  listen  further,  and  called  upon  him 
for  a  complete  retractation.  This  he  refused,  whereupon  at 
a  sitting,  held  on  July  6,  141 5,  it  declared  him  a  heretic,  and 
delivered  him  over  to  the  secular  arm,  by  which  he  was  con- 
demned to  be  burnt  alive.  He  walked  to  the  stake  with 
heroic  courage.  A  year  later,  the  council  caused  Jerome  of 
Prague  also  to  be  burnt ;  he  was  one  of  the  most  faithful 
adherents  of  Hus,  and  his  stormy  eloquence  had  spread  the 
doctrines  of  the  Master  even  as  far  as  Poland  and  Lithuania. 

John  Hus  is  only  known  to  foreigners  as  a  celebrated 
heretic,  and  is  admired  by  some  and  hated  by  others,  according 
to  the  religious  opinions  that  they  hold.  The  Slav  race,  especi- 
ally in  Bohemia,  honours  him  as  a  writer  of  genius,  the  intrepid 
defender  of  the  Chekhs,  and  the  purifier  of  their  language. 
There  is  more  than  one  analogy  to  be  found  between  Hus 
and  Luther.  What  Luther  did  for  German  prose,  Hus  had 
done  a  century  earlier  for  the  Bohemian  language.  Not  con- 
tent with  making  his  works  models  of  excellent  style,  he  set 
himself  also  to  fix  the  national  orthography.  He  Avas  at  great 
pains  to  adapt  the  Latin  alphabet  to  the  soft  and  sibilant 
sounds  of  the  Slav  tongue,  and  he  banished  Germanisms  from 
the  language  as  he  had  banished  Germans  from  the  university. 
He  wrote  :  "  As  Nehemiah  chastised  the  Jewish  children  when 
they  knew  not  Hebrew  and  he  heard  them  speak  the  jargon 
of  Ashdod,  so  must  the  men  of  Prague  be  chastised,  and  all 
those  Chekhs  whose  language  is  half  Chekh,  half  German. 
We  hear  them,  and  verily  we  know  not  what  they  say."     His. 


CHARACTER   OF  HUS.  1 75 

controversial  and  religious  writings,  as  well  as  his  letters  written 
from  Constance,  are  to  this  day  considered  as  models  of  style. 
As  a  poet,  he  composed  some  hymns,  for  which  he  also  wrote 
the  harmonies,  and  critics  declare  that  he  introduced  some 
improvements  in  religious  music. 

But  what  most  struck  his  contemporaries  was,  not  the 
genius  of  the  Master,  but  the  purity  of  his  life,  the  gentleness 
of  his  character,  the  heroism  of  his  martyrdom.  The  council 
desired  that  there  should  remain  on  earth  nothing  that  had 
belonged  to  him  ;  they  had  burnt  his  clothing,  and  thrown  his 
ashes  into  the  Rhine.  They  believed  that  they  had  got  rid  of 
the  spirit  of  reform  and  subdued  Bohemia.  Miserable  de- 
lusion !  From  the  flames  of  the  stake  of  John  Hus  a  great 
fire  was  set  alight,  which  desolated  Bohemia  and  Germany,  and 
was  only  extinguished  in  the  blood  of  countless  victims. 


CHAPTER  XIL 

BOHEMIA    AND    THE    HUSSITE    WARS. 

Formation  of  the  Sects  of  tlie  Utraquists  and  Taborites 
(1415-1419). 

The  death  of  Hus  in  no  wise  lessened  the  rehgious  excitement 
in  Bohemia,  but,  deprived  of  the  guidance  of  the  Master,  his 
followers  proceeded  to  push  his  doctrines  to  consequences 
which  had  never  been  foreseen  by  him.  He  had  never 
refused  obedience  to  the  visible  church,  but  had  only  pro- 
claimed the  right  of  appealing  to  Holy  Scripture  in  cases 
where  the  church  seemed  to  contradict  the  Divine  law.  He 
was  not  one  of  those  who  aimed  at  the  alteration  of  dogmas 
and  rites  to  suit  their  own  fancy,  but  when  the  religious 
imagination  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  once  roused,  it  could  not 
stop  half-way.  A  dogma  without  either  practical  consequence 
or  moral  application  was  enough  to  excite  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  masses,  who  at  that  time  found  the  strongest  interests  of 
their  lives  in  religious  dreams  and  fancies.  Not  long  after  Hus 
had  left  Bohemia,  one  of  his  disciples,  Jakoubek  Stribrsky  or 
de  Stribro,  began  to  teach  that  the  communion  ought  to  be 
administered  under  both  forms,  both  bread  and  wine,  to  people 
and  priests  alike.  Perhaps  the  doctrine  had  an  especial 
attraction  for  the  people  from  its  treating  all  men  as  equals. 
Besides  being  in  conformity  with  the  traditions  of  the  primitive 
church,  and  the  practice  until  late  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it 
made  no  difference   between  the  pastor  and  his  flock,  and 


RISE   OF  THE    UTRAQUISTS.  \J7 

diminished  the  prestige  of  the  priests.  However  that  may 
l)e,  it  was  adopted  with  enthusiasm  and  introduced  into  every 
parish  where  John  Hus  had  adherents.  The  Cup  became  the 
symbol  of  his  disciples,  and  was  to  be  found  on  the  bells  of 
the  churches  and  on  all  public  buildings.  An  epigram  of  the 
time  says — 

"Tot  pingit  calices  Boemorum  turba  per  urbes, 
Ut  credas  Bacchi  numina  sola  coli." 

The  council  of  Constance  lost  no  time  in  condemning  this 
innovation  of  the  Utraquists/  or  Calixtins,  as  they  were 
afterwards  called,  as  opposed  to  the  unvarying  authority  of  the 
church.  But  the  sentence  which  this  stormy  assembly  had 
just  pronounced  against  Hus  was  not  likely  to  increase  the 
obedience  or  the  sympathy  of  Bohemia.  When  the  news  of 
his  death  reached  Prague,  and  the  excited  people  listened  to 
the  account  given  of  him  by  his  faithful  friend  Peter  of  Mlade- 
novic,  who  represented  him  as  a  second  Christ,  their  wrath 
broke  out  in  violent  disturbances.  The  mob  attacked  the 
orthodox  priests,  w^hom  they  accused  of  complicity  in  the 
judicial  murder  of  the  Master;  some  of  them  were  mobbed, 
others  driven  from  their  homes,  some  few  were  murdered. 
An  earthquake  and  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  which  occurred  in 
1 41 5  w^ere  looked  upon  as  direct  evidence  of  the  wrath  of 
Heaven  against  the  deed.  In  the  rural  districts  the  lords  and 
knights  who  were  patrons  of  livings  took  advantage  of  the 
prevalent  disorder  and  drove  away  the  priests  they  disliked, 
and  replaced  them  with  others,  paying  no  regard  to  the  autho- 
rity of  bishops  or  archbishops.  But  it  was  not  religious  zeal 
alone  which  prompted  these  acts  of  violence,  since  some  of  the 
lords  stripped  the  clergy  of  their  benefices  only  in  order  to 
keep  them  for  themselves. 

Four  hundred  and  fifty-two  lords  and  knights  of  Bohemia 
and  Moravia  met  in  council  in  Prague  and  drew  up  a  letter 
addressed  to  the  council  of  Constance,  in  which  they  repre- 
*  Utraquist,  i.e.  those  who  communicate  sub  uiraquc  specie. 


1/8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

sented  the  murder  of  Hus  as  an  affront  to  the  whole  Boliemian 
nobility.  They  proceeded  to  form  themselves  into  a  kind  of 
league,  refusing  obedience  to  foreign  priests,  and  recognizing 
only  the  bishops  of  the  national  Church,  and  them  only  so 
long  as  their  doctrines  were  in  conformity  with  those  of  the 
Bible.  They  made  the  same  conditions  as  to  their  obedience 
to  the  pope  whom  the  council  were  about  to  elect ;  while  they 
declared  also  that  they  would  only  recognize  in  matters  of 
faith  the  authority  of  the  council  of  professors  in  the  university 
of  Prague.  Thus  the  Hussites,  or,  to  use  the  right  term,  the 
Utraquists,  formed  themselves  into  a  large  party  within  the 
bosom  of  the  Catholic  Church,  while  they  formed  also  a 
party  within  Bohemia  itself;  for  there  was  still  a  conservative 
minority  there,  who,  cither  from  conviction  or  interest,  re- 
mained faithfully  attached  to  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.  This 
minority  was  mainly  composed  of  Germans,  and  thus  the 
rivalry  between  the  two  nations  was  continued  in  religious 
matters.  The  important  part  in  all  the  events  of  this  time 
played  by  the  patriotism  of  the  Chekhs  in  its  struggle  against 
Geniianism  must  never  be  forgotten. 

The  council  of  Constance  took  energetic  measures  against 
the  Utraquists.  Jacob  de  Stribro  and  those  who  had  signed 
the  Declaration  were  summoned  to  appear  before  it,  and  the 
university  of  Prague,  as' the  seat  of  heresy,  was  declared  sup- 
pressed and  deprived  of  all  the  privileges  conferred  upon  it  by 
the  pope.  King  Vacslav,  (]ueen  Sophia,  and  Conrad,  the  new 
archbishop  of  Prague,  were  threatened  with  ecclesiastical 
penalties  if  they  did  not  openly  renounce  the  new  heresies. 
But  little  heed  was  paid  to  these  threats.  The  news  of  the 
execution  of  Jerome  of  Prague  heightened  the  exasperation  of 
the  nation,  and  the  university,  far  from  submitting  to  the 
council,  constituted  itself  a  court  of  appeal  in  matters  of 
doctrine,  and  declared  in  a  solemn  manifesto  that  communion 
under  both  forms  was  indispensable  to  the  salvation  of  souls. 
They  also  proclaimed  John  Hus  a  saint  and  martyr,  and  fixed 
his  festival  on  the  6th  of  July,  the  day  of  his  execution.     The 


DIVISION  AMOXG    THE   HUSSITES.  1 79 

day  was  observed  in  Bohemia  down  to  the  beginning  of  the 
seventeenth  century. 

But  it  was  not  long  before  anarchy,  the  plague  of  all 
independent  sects,  appeared  among  the  Hussites.  The  masters 
of  the  university  of  Prague  had  declare.d  that  nothing  was  to 
be  believed  which  was  not  to  be  found  in  Holy  Scripture ;  but 
the  Scriptures  are  not  always  clear,  and  when  once  texts  are 
submitted  to  individual  criticism,  or  to  men's  fancy,  they  may 
be  made  to  mean  almost  anything.  And  so  it  was  that  new 
sects  made  their  appearance  who  rejected  all  sacraments 
except  Baptism  and  the  Supper  of  our  Lord,  who  would  have 
neither  the  Mass,  the  worship  of  saints,  the  doctrine  of  pur- 
gatory, fasts,  nor  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy.  It  was  in  the 
rural  districts  that  these  doctrines  spread  most  widely. 

The  principal  centre  of  the  new  teachers  was  the  little  town 
of  Ousti,  not  far  from  the  spot  where  later  on  stood  the  town 
of  Tabor.  When  the  university  of  Prague  refused  obedience 
to  the  council  of  Constance  it  had  no  intention  of  separating 
itself  from  the  main  body  of  the  Church  for  ever.  When 
therefore  the  innovators  of  Ousti  drew  up  a  new  form  of  creed, 
it  played  the  part  of  an  orthodox  body,  and  declared  them 
heretics.  The  new  sect  refused  obedience  to  their  decisions, 
and  then  the  Hussites  proved  faithless  to  their  principles. 
Instead  of  spending  all  their  strength  on  the  reform  of  the 
Church,  they  lost  themselves  in  the  boundless  field  of  dog- 
matic theories.  In  this  first  period  of  excitement  a  constant 
struggle  went  on  between  the  most  peaceful  and  the  most 
revolutionary  ideas,  between  the  aristocracy  and  the  demo- 
cracy, socialism  and  communism,  between  obedience  to  tra- 
dition and  rationalism,  between  the  doctrines  of  the  Picards 
and  those  of  the  Adamites.  Unbridled  fancy  gave  birth  some- 
times to  the  most  absurd  excesses,  sometimes  to  the  most 
generous  impulses. 

The  council  of  Constance  broke  up  in  14 iS,  without 
having  succeeded  in  the  re-establishment  of  ecclesiastical 
authority  in  Bohemia,  and  the  pope,  Martin  \.,  on  whom  this 


I  So  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HVXGARY. 

difficult  task  next  devolved,  was  hardly  more  fortunate.     King 
Vacslav,  at  his  request,  tried  to  reinstate  the  priests  who  had  been 
driven  from  their  parishes,  but  the  people  rose  up  against  the 
pastors  thus  thrust  upon  them.    Rather  than  enter  the  churches 
of  the  intruders,  the  peasants,  under   the  guidance  of  their 
priests,  assembled  in  the  open  country,  usually  near  mountains 
to  which  they  gave  Biblical  names,  such  as  Tabor,  near  Ousti 
on   the    Elbe,    and    Oreb    near   the   town   of    Trebechovice. 
Mount  Tabor  became  the  home  of  the  most  ardent  preachers 
of  the  new  sect  of  Ousti.     There  they  formed  themselves  into 
a  new  body  which  aimed  at  the  restoration  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity and  maintained   the  principle  of  community  of  goods. 
Its  members  called  themselves  brothers  and  sisters,  rejected 
the  priestly  dress  and  all  ritual  in  worship,   and  conducted 
their  services  in  the  national  tongue.     These  communities  who 
thus   separated   themselves   both  from  the   general  faith  and 
ordinary  life,  needed  only  some  brave  leaders  to  enable  them 
to  withstand,  not  only  the  Church,  but  the  secular  power  also, 
if  it  interfered  with  them  ;  and  these  were  not  long  wanting. 
We  find  them  in  Nicholas  of  Hus  at  Tabor,  and  at  Prague 
in  the  priest  Procopius  called  the  Shaven,  and  the  old  knight 
John  Zizka   of  Trocnov,   who  had  learned  the  military  art, 
together  with  hatred  of  the  Germans,  while  fighting  against  the 
Teutonic  knights  in  the  ranks  of  the  Poles.     An  enthusiastic 
faith   made    of   these    improvised   soldiers    the   most   terrible 
warriors  known  to  the  Middle  Ages. 

Beginning  of  the  Struggle — Sigismund  (141 9- 1437 ) — 
John  Zizka  (1420). 

The  struggle  first  began  at  Prague.  On  the  renewal  of  the 
city  council  in  July,  141 9,  king  Vacslav  appointed  some 
sheriffs  who  were  hostile  to  the  Hussites.  Upon  this,  the 
populace,  led  on  by  Zizka  and  fired  by  the  preaching  of  the 
priest  John  of  Zeliv,  attacked  the  town  hall,  took  possession 
of  the  building,  seized  the  sheriffs,  and  threw  them  out  of  the 
windows  on  to  the  pikes  and  lances  of  the  crowd  below.    They 


ACCESSIOy  OF  SIGISMC'XD.  l8l 

then  obliged  the  kuig  to  choose  magistrates  who  were  favour- 
able to  their  party.  This  ferocious  deed  was  the  precedent 
for  that  defe7iesti-ation  (pitching  out  of  window)  which  was  the 
signal  for  the  beginning  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  two  centuries 
later.  Vacslav  was  obliged  to  submit  to  this  humiliation ;  he 
died  a  few  days  afterwards,  of  rage  and  vexation  according  to 
some,  of  poison  if  we  are  to  believe  others.  Crowned  king  of 
Bohemia  when  only  three  years  of  age,  chosen  king  of  the 
Romans  when  he  was  but  fifteen,  and  succeeding  to  his  father's 
throne  at  seventeen,  Vacslav  had  exhausted  all  worldly  greatness 
could  give  him  before  he  was  a  man.  He  was  ignorant  how 
to  support  so  great  a  burden.  First  a  prisoner  in  the  hands 
of  his  nobles,  and  next  in  those  of  his  own  brother  Sigismund, 
perpetually  wavering  between  the  Holy  See  and  the  Hussites, 
he  was  alternately  the  tool  of  men,  of  circumstance,  and  of  his 
own  passions,  and  never  learned  how  to  govern  any  of  them. 
His  reign  marks  the  beginning  of  the  decay  of  Bohemia's 
political  power,  but  the  Chekhs  had  reached  that  period  in  the 
history  of  a  nation  when  the  people  are  of  more  importance 
than  the  sovereign,  and,  notwithstanding  those  excesses  which 
were  inseparable  from  a  still  half-barbarous  age,  we  shall  see 
them  accomplish  great  things,  and  leave  for  future  ages  a  still 
more  glorious  and  enduring  story  than  that  of  Charles  IV.  or 
Premysl  Otokar. 

The  death  of  Vacslav  set  free  all  those  passions  which 
respect  for  the  majesty  of  the  king  had  hitherto  held  in  check. 
The  churches  and  monasteries  were  attacked  and  pillaged,  and 
the  Catholic  priests  driven  from  the  town  and  replaced  by 
Hussites.  The  archbishop  and  chapter  took  to  flight,  and 
their  example  was  followed  by  many  of  the  rich  burghers, 
especially  among  the  Germans.  According  to  the  arrange- 
ments made  by  Charles  IV.,  the  successor  of  Vacslav  was  Sigis- 
mund, emperor  and  king  of  Hungary,  and  the  very  man  who 
had  allowed  John  Hus  to  be  burned  at  Constance.  Notwith- 
standing this,  the  estates  of  Bohemia,  the  lords  and  knights,  at 
once  sent  ambassadors  to  him,  begging  him  to  come  to  Prague  ; 


1 8  2  HIS  TOR  Y  OF  A  USTR  0-IIUNGA  R  Y. 

but  at  the  same  time  they  insisted  on  their  right  to  communi- 
cate in  both  kinds.  To  allow  this  would  have  been  to  place 
himself  at  once  in  opposition  to  the  council  and  the  pope  j 
Sigismund,  therefore,  returned  an  evasive  answer,  and  meantime 
entrusted  the  government  of  Bohemia  to  the  queen  dowager, 
Sophia,  until  he  should  be  able  to  come.  The  regent  found 
herself  supported  by  the  nobles,  who  began  to  be  alarmed  at 
the  popular  gatherings  which  were  held  under  pretence  of  reli- 
gion. She  attempted  to  disperse  some  of  these  by  force,  but 
Zizka  and  Nicholas  of  Hus  roused  the  people  of  Prague, 
attempted  to  take  the  royal  castle  by  assault,  burned  part  of 
the  city,  and  obliged  Sophia  to  permit  communion  in  both 
kinds,  and  also  popular  assemblies. 

King  Sigismund,  on  the  receipt  of  this  news,  hastened 
towards  his  new  kingdom.  He  first  received  the  homage  of  the 
states  of  Moravia  and  Silesia,  and  then  began  to  make  such 
preparations  within  these  two  provinces  as  should  enable  him 
to  enter  Bohemia  without  difficulty,  and  restore  temporal  and 
spiritual  order  within  her  borders.  Distrusting,  however,  his 
own  power  to  raise  sufficient  forces,  his  next  step  was  to  beg 
the  pope  to  allow  a  crusade  against  the  Hussites  to  be  preached, 
and  Martin  V.  sent  a  special  legate  to  Vratislav  (Breslau)  to 
consult  with  Sigismund  about  this  matter.  At  the  same  time 
he  summoned  the  princes  of  the  empire  also  to  give  their  aid. 

These  circumstances  restored  courage  to  the  Catholics  and 
Germans  of  Bohemia,  and  the  Germans  of  Kutna  Hora 
(Kuttenberg)  began  to  persecute  the  heterodox  in  their  neigh- 
bourhood. They  seized  four  hundred  persons,  either  in  the 
0])en  country  or  in  their  own  houses,  and  threw  them  into  the 
mines.  A  cry  of  liorror  arose  from  the  entire  country,  and 
Zizka  hastened  to  Mount  Tabor,  where  he  organized  the 
brotherhood  living  on  the  mountain  into  a  military  force,  and 
transformed  the  settlement  into  a  fortified  town  in  such  fashion 
that  it  became  the  strongest  military  position  of  the  Hussites, 
From  this  time  the  word  tahor  (under  the  form  of  tobor),  be- 
came, even  in  the  neighbouring  countries,  the  synonym  for 


JOHN  ZIZKA.  183 

a  warlike  place  or  forufied  camp.  A  number  of  other  Chekh 
■words  also  made  their  way,  during  the  Hussite  wars,  into  the 
military  language  of  the  Germans. 

Zizka's  extemporized  army  required  new  tactics  and  new 
-arms ;  it  could  not  drag  about  with  it  all  the  knightly  armour 
•of  the  Middle  Ages.  Flails  weighted  with  iron  and  the  heavy 
hammer  of  the  blacksmith  were  its  weapons,  and  clumsy 
waggons  served  as  shelter  to  the  combatants  and  a  refuge 
for  the  wounded.  The  strictest  discipline  secured  unity  of 
action.  Even  the  more  moderate  reformers,  the  Utraquists 
of  Prague,  when  they  learned  that  the  emperor  was  taking  the 
cross  against  them,  prepared  to  defend  their  faith,  and  Cenek 
of  Wartenburg,  the  grand-burgrave  of  Prague,  addressed  a 
proclamation  to  the  whole  people  of  Bohemia,  calling  upon 
them  to  arm  themselves  against  the  common  enemy. 

In  the  spring  of  1420,  the  emperor  Sigismund,  at  the  head 
of  his  army,  invaded  Bohemia,  entering  it  by  Kralove-Hradec 
iind  by  Kutna  Hora,  and  penetrated  as  far  as  Hradcany,  one 
of  the  districts  of  Prague  itself,  where  he  had  himself  crowned 
in  the  cathedral  of  St.  Vit  on  the  28th  of  July.  He  then 
besieged  the  rest  of  Prague.  John  Zizka,  at  the  head  of  the 
Taborites,  marched  to  the  relief  of  the  city  just  at  the  moment 
"when  the  army  of  the  crusaders  entered  Bohemia.  It  was 
commanded  by  the  most  powerful  princes  of  (Germany,  and 
numbered  about  one  hundred  thousand  men.  The  fall  of 
Prague  would  have  brought  with  it  the  immediate  ruin  of 
Bohemia  and  the  annihilation  of  the  Chekh  nation.  But  the 
genius  of  Zizka  rose  to  the  occasion ;  he  took  possession  of 
Mount  Vitkov,  near  Prague,  repulsed  the  assaults  of  the  Ger- 
man army,  and  obliged  them  to  raise  the  siege  of  the  city. 
The  mount  has  ever  since  borne  his  name,  Zizkov  (Zizkaberg). 

The  presence  of  Sigismund  in  Bohemia  was  still,  however, 
fraught  with  danger  to  the  Hussites.  He  had  in  his  power 
almost  all  the  royal  towns  and  villages,  and  even  the  royal 
castle  and  the  Vysehrad  which  commands  Prague  from  the 
right  bank  of  the  river  Ultava.     His  army  was  composed  of 


1 84  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

Bohemian  Catholics,  and  also  of  some  of  the  Utraquist  nobles. 
But  his  treasure  was  exhausted,  and  in  order  to  meet  the 
expenses  of  the  war  he  was  obliged  to  pledge  some  of  the 
estates  of  the  clergy.  Prague  gave  no  sign  of  yielding ;  instead, 
the  besieged  became  in  their  turn  besiegers,  and  blockaded  the 
castle  of  Vysehrad,  and  it  was  in  vain  that  Sigismund  tried  to 
relieve  it ;  he  was  forced  to  abandon  this  strong  position.  It 
was  just  at  this  moment  that  he  was  recalled  to  Hungary  by 
the  affairs  of  that  nation,  and  had  to  quit  Bohemia,  though  not 
until  he  had  organized  a  provisional  government,  by  which  the 
lords,  knights,  and  citizens  of  each  circle  were  entrusted  with 
the  task  of  restoring  order,  Avith  the  help  of  the  burgraves  and 
the  garrisons  of  the  royal  castles. 

The  departure  of  the  king  increased  the  courage  of  the  in- 
surgents, who  felt  also  that  they  were  secretly  supported  by  the 
sympathies  of  the  larger  part  of  the  nation.  The  city  of  Prague 
issued  a  decree  of  banishment  and  confiscation  against  all  those 
who  had  joined  king  Sigismund,  or  who  had  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge the  necessity  for  communion  in  both  kinds.  Part  of  the 
property  of  the  Catholic  clergy  was  also  confiscated.  Thus  was 
destroyed  that  preponderance  of  the  German  element  which 
had  so  long  prevailed  in  the  town  of  Prague.  Those  Germans 
who  remained  became  converts  to  the  Hussite  doctrines.  The 
men  of  Prague  next  undertook,  with  the  help  of  Zizka  and  the 
Taborites,  to  reconquer  the  whole  country,  and  before  long  they 
were  able  to  occupy  all  the  towns,  with  the  exception  of  Plzen 
(Pilsen)  and  Budejovice,  though  some  of  them  not  until  after 
energetic  resistance.  The  castle  of  Prague  was  the  last  to- 
yield.  When  the  towns  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Chekhs,  their 
German  inhabitants  for  the  most  part  quitted  them,  and  they 
have  never  since  recovered  their  position.  "  Thus,"  according 
to  Pelzel,  "  the  Hussites  overthrew  that  monument  which  it  had 
taken  the  Germans  five  centuries  to  raise  to  themselves  and 
their  language."  Many  churches,  monasteries,  and  religious 
buildings  were  destroyed  during  the  struggle.  The  Taborites 
showed  no  mercy  j  but  violence  had  become  necessary  to  save 


NEGOCJATIONS    WITH  POLAXD.  1 85 

the  Bohemia  of  the  Slavs  from  being  completely  Germanized. 
Terrified  by  this  success,  the  Utraquist  nobles  who  had  joined 
the  party  of  the  king  soon  abandoned  his  cause  and  embraced 
that  of  the  people  ;  and  even  the  archbishop  of  Prague  made 
terms'  with  them,  consecrated  their  priests,  and  placed  some  of 
the  ecclesiastical  benefices  at  their  disposal. 

Negociations  with  Poland — Sigisimind  Korybuto-ivicz  (1420) — 
The  Four  Articles — Death  of  Zizka  (1424), 

•The  Hussites  were  triumphant.  Their  next  step  was  to 
meet  in  a  diet  at  Caslav,  to  decide  on  a  form  of  creed  and  to 
settle  the  constitution  of  the  kingdom.  This  creed  was  drawn 
up  by  the  masters  of  the  university  of  Prague ;  it  was  to  be 
found  at  the  head  of  all  Zizka's  proclamations,  and  contained 
four  articles :  communion  under  both  kinds ;  freedom  of 
preaching  ;  secularisation  of  Church  property ;  while  the  fourth 
article  ordained  that  mortal  sins  and  offences  against  ecclesi- 
astical law,  whether  committed  by  priests  or  laymen,  should  be 
punishable  by  temporal  penalties.  The  diet  next  proceeded  to 
declare  Sigismund  the  enemy  of  the  Bohemian  people,  and  to 
deprive  him  of  his  title  of  king.  A  solemn  embassy  was  sent 
into  Poland  to  offer  the  crown  of  Vacslav  to  Wladislaw,  and  it 
was  decided  that  in  the  meantime  the  country  should  be 
governed  by  a  committee  of  twenty  persons,  half  of  them 
chosen  from  the  representatives  of  the  lords  and  knights,  and 
half  from  those  of  the  towns  and  the  Taborites.  The  effort  at 
reform  was  completed  by  the  decisions  of  a  synod  which  met 
at  Prague,  and  which  occupied  itself  principally  in  the  amend- 
ment of  church  discipline,  under  the  guidance  of  the  university. 
It  obliged  the  archbishop  Conrad  to  associate  with  himself  four 
councillors,  whose  business  it  was  to  help  him  to  maintain  this 
discipline. 

But  the  nation  was  as  far  as  ever  from  real  unity.  The 
Taborites,  who  meant  to  have  a  Church  of  their  own,  had 
already  (1420)  chosen  a  bishop  to  consecrate  their  priests, 
thus  separating   themselves   from   the    rest  of  the  Bohemian 


I  86  inSJ'ORV  OF  AUSTRO-IWNGARY. 

Church,  while  tlie  national  Church  itself  no  longer  formed  part 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  since  the  pope  had  forbidden  the  arch- 
bishop to  exercise  his  functions  and  had  declared  his  diocese 
vacant. 

The  Chekhs  believed  themselves  able  to  count  on  the  help 
of  Wladislaw,  because  some  of  the  Polish  nobility  had  em- 
braced the  Hussite  doctrines,  and  also  because  an  increase  of 
territory  at  this  moment  would  have  been  of  great  use  to  the 
Polish  king,  who  w-as  engaged  in  a  dispute  with  Sigismund  for 
the  possession  of  Galicia.  But  the  Polish  clergy  feared  that  a 
close  union  between  Poland  and  Bohemia  would  hasten  the 
spread  of  the  Hussite  doctrine,  and  the  representative  of  pope 
Martin  V.  induced  Wladislaw  to  decline  the  crown  that  v/as 
offered  him.  The  Chekhs  then  offered  it  to  Prince  Vitold, 
grand-duke  of  Lithuania.  Knowing  how  disastrous  to  their 
interests  had  been  their  connection  with  German  dynasties, 
they  were  anxious  to  bring  about  a  closer  union  with  their  Slav 
relations. 

The  moment  was  one  of  great  danger,  for  Sigismund  had 
arranged  with  the  German  princes  to  prepare  a  new  crusade 
against  Bohemia.  Happily  for  the  Chekhs,  the  German  army 
entered  Bohemia  before  Sigismund  was  ready  to  come  to  its 
assistance.  It  numbered  about  two  hundred  thousand  men, 
and  had  five  electors  among  its  leaders.  Zatec  (Saatz),  now 
a  German,  but  then  a  Chekh  town,  was  first  of  all  besieged, 
but  it  defended  itself  bravely,  and  meantime  the  crusaders 
proceeded  to  ravage  the  country  round  and  to  massacre  the 
peasants,  every  one  who  could  not  speak  German  being  put  to 
death.  Zizka  hurried  forward  with  the  Taborites  and  the  men 
of  Prague.  He  had  lost  one  eye  early  in  life,  and  the  other 
at  the  siege  of  the  castle  of  Rabi;  but  his  blindness  never 
lessened  his  military  skill,  and  his  very  name  was  a  terror  to 
his  enemies.  The  Germans  immediately  raised  the  siege  of 
Zatec,  and  retired.  Sigismund  had  been  detained  on  the 
Danube  by  the  incursions  of  the  Turks,  but  at  this  moment 
he  arrived  with  an  army  of  eighty  thousand  men,  commanded 


SL'CC£SS  OF  THE    TABORITES.  I  8/ 

by  the  celebrated  condottiere,  Pipa  the  Florentine.  JMora^  ia 
yielded  at  once ;  she  had  none  of  the  natural  defences  of 
Bohemia,  and  was  occupied  by  a  less  vigorous  and  less  obsti- 
nate race.  Her  nobles  swore  obedience  to  Sigismund,  and 
renounced  communion  under  both  kinds,  and  their  example 
was  followed  by  some  of  the  Utraquist  nobles  of  Bohemia, 
who  laid  down  their  arms.  Sigismund  next  pushed  forward  to 
Kutna  Hora,  and  seized  it ;  but  Zizka  suddenly  attacked  and 
repulsed  him,  drove  him  back  to  Nemecky  Brod  (the  Ford  of 
the  Germans),  and  then  inflicted  on  him  a  terrible  defeat  on 
the  banks  of  the  river  Sazava  (January  8,  1422). 

This  victory  freed  Bohemia  from  German  invasions,  and 
for  several  years  the  Chekhs  were  masters  of  their  own  land, 
only  disturbed  by  some  slight  attacks  on  the  frontiers  on  the 
side  of  Moravia  and  Silesia.  Unfortunately,  peace  was  very 
far  from  reigning  within  their  borders.  Questions  of  dogma 
divided  the  Taborites  and  the  men  of  Prague,  and  the 
Taborites  themselves  split  into  several  sects.  The  strangest 
theories  arose.  Some  amongst  them  preached  the  com- 
munity of  goods  and  even  of  marriage  ;  others  (the  Adamites) 
returned  to  a  state  of  nature,  to  primitive  nudity  and  uncon- 
trolled bestiality.  John  Zizka  was  obliged  to  fight  these 
insubordinate  disciples,  and  burned  alive  some  of  those  who 
fell  into  his  hands.  In  Prague,  where  the  party  of  the 
Taborites  had  been  strengthened  by  a  large  number  of 
recruits,  it  threatened  to  take  possession  of  the  city.  It  was 
led  by  John  de  Zeliv,  the  monk,  whose  burning  eloquence 
exercised  so  great  an  influence  over  the  populace,  that  for 
nearly  two  years  he  was  the  real  sovereign  of  Prague,  but  after 
that  time  the  rich  citizens  succeeded  in  getting  him  into  their 
power  by  stratagem,  and  cut  off  his  head.  His  death  was 
followed  by  a  riot,  in  which  the  conservative  Utraquists  who 
were  on  the  town  council  were  expelled  and  their  places  filled 
by  the  followers  of  the  new  martyr. 

Notwithstanding  all  these  disorders,  the  grand-duke  of 
Lithuania  decided  to  accept  the  crown  of  Bohemia.     He  chose 


1 88  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

for  his  provisional  lieutenant  Prince  Sigismund  Korybutowicz^ 
wlio  was  the  nephew  of  the  king  of  Poland.  The  new  regent 
assembled  an  army  at  Cracow,  at  the  head  of  which  he  entered 
the  kingdom  by  way  of  Silesia  and  Moravia.  But  this  pre- 
caution was  needless,  as  he  met  with  no  resistance ;  the 
Bohemians,  who  were  so  divided  among  themselves,  and  so 
jealous  of  their  complete  freedom,  even  in  matters  of  slight 
importance,  were  ready  enough  to  obey  a  king  of  their  own 
choosing.  The  regent  succeeded  in  putting  an  end  to  the 
disorders  in  Prague  and  the  other  royal  cities,  and  gave  the 
administration  of  those  towns  back  into  the  hands  of  the  lords 
and  knights.  Unfortunately  for  Bohemia,  prince  Sigismund 
Korybutowicz  did  not  long  remain  to  act  as  peacemaker.  In 
consequence  of  a  treaty  entered  into  by  the  kings  of  Hungary 
and  Poland,  prince  Vitold  renounced  the  crown  of  Bohemia  in 
1422,  and  recalled  his  Avise  lieutenant. 

The  Utraquist  nobles,  with  the  help  of  the  Catholics,  now 
attempted  to  place  Bohemia  once  more  in  the  hands  of  king 
Sigismund,  but  Zizka  undertook  a  vigorous  campaign  against 
them,  and,  as  usual,  the  Taborites  were  triumphant.  Sigismund 
Korybutowicz  once  more  returned  (1424)  to  mediate  between 
the  two  parties.  He  appears  to  have  come  on  his  own  account, 
and  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  his  uncle,  who  does  not  seem 
ever  to  have  regretted  his  refusal  of  the  crown,  and  his 
popularity  was  so  great  that  the  two  parties  agreed  to  recognize 
him  once  more  as  regent  of  the  country. 

Zizka  died  shortly  at'ter  these  events.  The  few  documents 
written  by  him  which  remain  prove  his  sincere  faith  and  deep 
religious  feeding,  which  were  united  with  the  most  ardent 
patriotism.  He  declares  in  one  of  his  manifestoes  that  he 
takes  up  arms  for  the  defence  of  the  Chekh  and  Slav  races. 
Elsewhere  he  says,  "We  must  live  good  lives,  live  as  Christians, 
in  love  and  in  the  fear  of  God.  We  must  place  in  His  hands  our 
wishes,  our  needs,  and  our  hopes,  and  wait  always  upon  Him." 
In  a  hymn,  which  is  both  religious  and  warlike,  he  says  to  his 
soldiers,  "You  are  the  champions  of  God  and  of  His  law — 


DEATH  OF  ZIZKA.  ]  89 

Ask  God  for  His  iiid — And  hope  in  Him.— In  the  end  by  His 
help — You  must  always  conquer. — The  Lord  commands  you 
to  have  no  fear — Of  what  man  can  do. — He  commands  us  to 
lay  down  our  lives  for  the  love  of  our  neighbours. — Wherefore 
be  of  good  courage  ! — Happy  is  he  who  can  die  for  the  truth  1 
— Let  comrade  help  comrade — Watch  and  be  still — Each  man 
at  his  post — And  utter  joyfully  the  war-cry,  'Forward!"'' 
yEneas  Sylvius,  the  elegant  but  somewhat  untrustworthy  historian 
of  this  period  of  Bohemian  history,  has  helped  to  spread  two 
mistakes  about  Zizka,  which  it  may  not  be  useless  to  correct 
here.  He  wrongly  states  that  the  word  Zizka  means  blind  ;  and 
he  has  invented  the  childish  story  that  after  his  death  the  skin 
of  the  warrior  was  used  by  his  followers  as  a  covering  for  their 
drum. 

Procopius  the  Great — Victory  of  Ousti  (1427) — Hussite 
Invasion  of  Hungary  and  Germany  (1424-143 1). 

The  death  of  Zizka  was  a  serious  loss  to  his  party.  His 
courage  had  enabled  the  Taborites  to  resist  their  enemies 
within  the  kingdom ;  his  authority  had  kept  them  as  far  as 
possible  in  the  paths  of  reason  and  moderation.  On  his  death, 
his  party  broke  up,  the  extreme  body  keeping  tlie  name  of 
Taborites,  the  more  moderate  taking  that  of  Orphans  (Sirotcij. 
But  both,  notwithstanding  their  intestine  struggles,  were  always 
ready  to  unite  against  the  Catholics,  and  by  the  treaty  of 
Voszice  they  were  able  to  obtain  the  separation  of  most  of  the 
royal  towns  from  Prague  (1425),  and  their  formation  into  an 
independent  confederacy,  under  the  management  of  the 
Taborites  and  the  Calixtins.  After  a  time,  the  Catholics 
themselves  agreed  to  a  truce,  and  the  lords  undertook  to 
tolerate  the  communion  sub  ntraque  on  their  estates.  The 
town  of  Pilsen  alone  refused  to  enter  into  this  agreement. 

Moravia  had  remained  more  faithful  to  the  Catholic  Church. 
Orthodox  opinions  reigned  almost  undisturbed  throughout  the 
vast  domains  of  the  bishop  of  Olomouc  and  in  the  royal  towns 
whicli  were  mainly  peopled  by  Germans,  and  which  had  for  the 


190  HISIORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

most  part  been  pledged  by  king  Sigismund  to  his  son-in-law, 
the  duke  of  Austria.  It  was  only  by  the  help  and  through  the 
close  neighbourhood  of  Bohemia  that  the  Moravian  Hussites 
could  hold  their  own.  In  the  other  provinces  of  the  kingdom 
of  St.  Vacslav,  in  Silesia  and  Lusatia,  the  German  majority, 
who  later  on  were  so  ready  to  embrace  the  doctrines  of  Luther, 
from  national  rather  than  religious  motives  were  hostile  to  the 
Hussite  movement.  Brandenburg  had  long  ceased  to  belong 
to  Bohemia,  king  Sigismund,  who  was  always  in  want  of  money, 
having  sold  it  in  141 6  to  Frederick  of  HohenzoUern. 

Sigismund  still  hoped  to  be  able  to  recover  his  kingdom. 
After  having  in  vain  begged  for  help  from  the  empire,  he 
entered  into  an  alliance  with  his  son-in-law,  Albert  V.,  duke  of 
Austria,  and  the  margrave  of  Misnia ;  to  the  latter  he  pro- 
mised some  towns  to  the  north  of  Bohemia,  amongst  them 
Brux  and  Ousti  (Aussig),  on  the  Elbe,  as  the  price  of  his  assist- 
ance, and  these  places  were  at  once  occupied  by  that  prince. 
This  time  the  Chekhs  did  not  wait  till  their  country  was 
invaded  ;  they  at  once  took  the  offensive,  both  on  the  north 
and  south,  entered  Austria,  and  sent  an  army  to  besiege  Ousti. 
They  were  led  by  Sigismund  Korybutowicz,  who  was  always 
true  to  the  cause  of  Bohemia,  and  Prokop  Holy  (Procopius 
the  Shaven,  also  called  Procopius  the  Great).  This  man  was 
a  married  priest,  who  had  been  made  a  soldier  by  circum- 
stances, and  who  believed  himself  to  be  the  heir  of  Zizka's 
genius.  A  bloody  battle  took  place  under  the  walls  of  Ousti, 
in  which  the  Saxons  and  Misnians  were  completely  defeated, 
and  forced  to  retreat  beyond  the  frontiers  (1426),  Albert  of 
Austria  flying  first  into  IMoravia  and  then  into  his  own  duchy. 
The  Hussites  in  their  turn  became  invaders,  and  the  emperor 
Sigismund,  whose  efforts  were  paralysed  by  the  attacks  of  the 
Turks  in  other  parts  of  his  dominions,  was  unable  to  with- 
stand them. 

But  while  victorious  over  their  adversaries  in  the  field, 
the  Hussites  continued  to  break  up  into  numerous  sects. 
We  have  already  mentioned  the  divisions  among  the  Taborites:. 


SJGISMC/ND   KORYBUTOWICZ.  I9I 

these  were  now  followed  by  a  great  split  in  the  sect  of  the 
Utraquists.  Two  parties  Avere  formed  among  them,  one  of 
whicli,  under  the  leadership  of  Master  John  of  Pribram,  endea- 
voured to  become  reconciled  to  the  Catholic  Church.  They 
stipulated  that  they  should  keep  the  right  to  communicate 
under  both  kinds,  and  demanded  the  restitution  of  Church 
property,  but  were  ready  to  renounce  the  doctrines  of  Wyclifte. 
The  other  party  adhered  to  the  doctrines  of  Wycliffe,  and 
demanded  the  abolition  of  certain  Catholic  rites  and  the  use 
of  the  national  language  during  Mass  for  the  reading  of  the 
Epistle  and  Gospel.  Their  leaders  were  Jacob  of  Stribro,  John 
of  Rokycana,  an  able  preacher,  and  Procopius  the  Less 
(Prokopek). 

Prince  Sigismund  inclined  towards  the  party  of  John  of 
Pribram,  which  seemed  to  him  likely  to  reconcile  Bohemia 
with  the  Catholic  Church.  He  entered  into  secret  negociations 
with  pope  ]\Iartin  V.,  but  on  this  the  adherents  of  Rokycana 
rose  against  him,  took  him  prisoner,  and  drove  him  out  of 
Bohemia  (1427).  The  democratic  party  triumphed  ;  the  men 
of  Prague  entered  into  closer  alliance  than  ever  with  the 
Taborites,  and  Procopius  the  Great  became  sole  leader  of  the 
Hussites,  with  powers  even  more  considerable  than  those  once 
l)Ossessed  by  Zizka. 

The  Holy  See,  however,  continued  to  preach  the  crusade 
against  Bohemia ;  and  the  German  princes  once  more  entered 
the  country,  this  time  by  way  of  Plzen  (Pilsen),  the  town 
which  had  remained  faithful  to  the  Catholic  Church.  On 
the  arrival  of  Procopius  the  Great,  however,  their  army  was 
seized  by  a  panic  and  withdrew  to  Tachov,  where  the  Chekhs 
overtook  them  and  defeated  them  comi)letely.  Procopius 
then  took  the  offensive  both  in  those  Bohemian  provinces 
where  the  Hussite  doctrines  did  not  prevail  and  in  the  neigh- 
bouring countries.  He  invaded  and  ravaged  Hungary  as  far 
as  Poszony  (Presburg) ;  entered  Moravia,  where  the  Hussites 
had  been  lately  regaining  lost  ground,  and  in  the  beginning  of 
1428   reached   Silesia.     Here   the   Chekhs   captured  a   large 


192  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

number  of  fortresses  and  garrisoned  them,  defeated  and  broke 
up  the  army  of  the  bishop  of  Kreslau,  and  brought  part  of 
Silesia  into  submission,  Tliey  also  entered  Bavaria  an4 
Austria,  everywhere  driving  before  them  the  troops  sent  against 
them,  and  ravaging  the  country.  There  was  no  doubt  they 
were  invincible,  and  the  emperor  Sigismund  felt  that  there  was 
nothing  left  to  be  done  but  to  treat  with  them.  Negociations 
to  this  end  were  begun,  and  Procopius  the  Great,  accompanied 
by  the  leaders  of  the  Utraquist  and  Catholic  parties,  went  to 
Poszony,  where  it  was  proposed  by  Sigismund  that  a  council 
should  meet  in  Basle  in  two  years'  time  to  decide  all  religious 
questions,  and  that  meantime  there  should  be  a  truce.  But 
Bohemia  had  not  forgotten  the  fate  of  John  Hus,  and  had  but 
small  confidence  in  the  result  of  any  council,  while  a  truce 
would  only  give  their  enemies  time  to  grow  stronger.  They 
refused  to  accept  these  proposals,  the  meeting  at  Poszony  came 
to  nothing,  and  hostilities  began  again. 

Procopius  next  invaded  and  conquered  Lusatia,  He  then 
undertook  a  great  expedition  against  Germany,  attacking  it  on 
the  side  of  Misnia  and  Saxony  (1430).  The  army  of  the  elector 
of  Saxony  fled  before  the  Hussites  ;  Misnia,  Saxony,  Thuringia, 
and  Franconia  were  each  in  turn  invaded,  and  some  historians 
say  that  seventy  towns  and  some  thousands  of  villages  were 
burned  or  laid  waste.  The  Hussites  became  the  terror  of 
Germany ;  Rome  and  Italy  had  never  trembled  before  the 
tiimnltus  gaUiciis  of  earlier  times  as  Germany  did  now  before 
them.  The  duke  of  Bavaria,  the  margrave  of  Nuremburg,  and 
many  of  the  towns  purchased  peace  from  the  invaders,  and  the 
town  of  Homburg-on-the-Saale  sent  a  deputation  of  children 
to  Procopius  to  beg  for  pity  from  the  fierce  conqueror.  An 
apocryphal  letter  from  Joan  of  Arc  was  circulated  throughout 
the  empire,  in  which  she  threatened  to  march  against  the 
Hussites  as  soon  as  she  had  driven  away  the  English. 

The  exploits  of  the  Chekhs  filled  all  Europe  with  admiration 
as  well  as  with  terror.  The  Church  and  Holy  See  felt  the 
alarm  all   the  more  because  the  Hussite  doctrines  began  to 


COUXCIL   OF  BASLli.  I93 

spread  outside  Bohemia,  not  only  in  Poland  and  Hungar)-, 
but  in  Germany,  and  even  in  France.  The  inhabitants  of 
Dauphiny  sent  voluntary  contributions  to  the  Chekhs ;  the 
Bishop  of  Arras  wrote  that  he  dare  not  leave  his  diocese, 
because  "he  was  obliged  to  watch  over  his  flock  to  preserve 
them  from  the  contagion  of  the  Bohemian  heresy."  Chris- 
tendom believed  that  the  only  remedy  for  so  many  evils  lay 
in  the  convocation  of  a  council,  and  the  clergy  of  Germany 
and  France  threatened  to  meet  without  the  consent  of  the 
pope,  if  they  could  not  do  so  with  it.  The  pope,  however, 
had  more  faith  in  the  force  of  arms  than  in  the  decisions  of 
an  assembly  of  theologians.  He  believed  that  if  Bohemia 
could  only  be  subdued,  everything  would  be  easy,  and  the 
most  rebellious  spirits  would  then  have  to  submit  to  the  au- 
thority of  the  dogmas  of  the  Church.  At  the  diet  of  Nurem- 
burg  (1431),  therefore,  the  papal  legate  Cesarini  and  the 
emperor  decided  that  there  must  be  a  new  crusade,  and,  shortly 
after,  an  army  entered  Bohemia  on  the  Avest,  near  the  town  oi 
Domazlice  (Taus).  Here  Procopius  awaited  them  with  forty 
thousand  foot  soldiers,  three  thousand  five  hundred  horsemen, 
and  two  thousand  five  hundred  war-chariots,  and  once  more 
the  Germans  took  to  flight,  were  pursued,  and  suffered  terrible 
loss,  and  again  the  Hussites  invaded  Austria  and  Hungary. 

Meantime  a  council  met  at  Basle.  It  had  a  glorious  task 
before  it,  that  of  restoring  peace  to  Europe.  The  whole  world 
longed  for  peace  ;  it  was  sorely  needed  by  Germany,  but  still 
more  by  Bohemia,  for  she  was  becoming  exhausted  in  the 
endless  struggle.  War  outside  the  frontiers  did  not  cost  the 
country  much,  because  the  Hussite  army  lived  at  the  expense 
of  the  foreigner ;  but  the  soldiers  were  learning  habits  of 
rapine,  which  they  brought  back  home  with  them  •  they  were 
joined  by  needy  adventurers  of  all  kinds,  Poles,  Ruthenians, 
even  Germans,  and  had  lost  the  old  characteristics  of  religious 
gravity  and  incorruptible  morality  which  had  distinguished  the 
comrades  of  Zizka.  Besides  all  this,  since  the  departure  of 
Sigismund  Korybutowicz,  there  had  been  no  real  government 

o 


194  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

in  the  country  :  a  committee  of  twelve,  composed  of  lords^ 
knights,  and  citizens,  had  indeed  been  formed  in  143 1,  but  its 
authority  was  little  respected. 

The  Council  of  Basic  (1431) — Anarchy  in  Bohemia — Batik  of 
Lipany  (i434)- 

The  council  was  opened  at  Basle  in  1431,  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  October  a  conciliatory  letter  was  sent  to  the  Hussites. 
Conrad,  the  Utraquist  bishop,  had  died  in  the  month  of 
December  of  the  previous  year,  and,  if  Bohemia  was  to  continue 
to  have  a  clergy,  it  had  become  necessary  for  her  either  to 
break  finally  with  apostolic  tradition,  or  else  to  become  recon- 
ciled with  the  Church  Catholic.  This  letter  from  the  council, 
therefore,  proposing,  as  it  did,  that  the  Hussites  should  send 
an  embassy  to  Basle,  was  received  with  joy  by  the  Estates  and 
the  more  peaceable  inhabitants  of  the  country.  In  a  diet  held 
at  Prague  in  the  month  of  January,  1432,  it  was  decided  by 
the  Utraquists  and  Orphans  that  negociations  should  be  entered 
into  with  the  council,  in  order  to  find  out  in  what  manner  their 
envoys  would  be  received.  They  had  not  forgotten  John 
Hus  and  the  safe-conduct  which  saved  him  neither  from  a 
prison  nor  the  stake,  and  the  Taborites  only  agreed  to 
negociate  on  condition  that  the  war  should  be  continued  till 
all  was  settled.  Procopius  continued  to  push  on  his  invasion 
of  Germany,  and  ravaged  Brandenburg  as  far  as  Berlin  and 
Frankfort-on-the-Oder.  He  then  turned  towards  Hungar}-, 
where  he  took  the  town  of  Nagy  Szombat  (Tyrnau),  and  forced 
Silesia  to  buy  peace  from  him  on  exceedingly  hard  terms. 

In  the  year  1432,  the  Hussites  had  sent  an  embassy  to  the 
court  of  king  Wladislaw,  which  succeeded  in  concluding  a 
treaty  between  Poland  and  the  Chekhs,  by  which  it  was 
arranged  that  the  young  Polish  prince  Wladislaw  Jagellon 
should  receive  the  crown  of  Bohemia  in  exchange  for  the  help 
of  Poland.  But  in  spite  of  this,  and  notwithstanding  the 
opposition  of  pope  Eugenius  IV,,  who  deemed  all  negociations 
with  heretics  hurtful  to  the  authority  of  the  Church,  the  council 


HUSSITE  DEMANDS  AT  BASLE.  ]rj^ 

of  Basle  sent  a  deputation  to  the  Bohemians  to  arrange  the 
manner  in  which  their  envoys  should  be  received.  It  was 
agreed  that  they  .  should  appear  before  the  council,  not  as 
accused  persons  before  a  judge,  but  as  free  men,  with  leave 
to  defend  their  doctrines  on  the  authority  of  Holy  Scripture 
and  the  Fathers.  On  this,  the  Hussites  sent  a  large  embassy 
to  Basle,  among  whom  were  many  eminent  persons,  both 
laymen  and  priests.  Distinguislied  among  them  all  were 
Procopius  the  Bald,  ]\Iaster  John  of  Rokycana,  and  Peter 
Payne,  the  Englishman. 

Procopius  made  his  entry  into  Basle  on  the  6th  of  January, 
1433,  accompanied  by  a  hundred  members  of  his  party. 
.HKneas  Sylvius,  afterwards  pope  Pius  II.,  who  Avas  an  eye- 
witness, has  told  us  of  the  impression  produced  on  the  people 
by  the  sight  of  these  Hussites,  each  one  of  whom,  according 
to  their  enemies,  was  possessed  by  a  hundred  devils,  and  of 
the  terror  inspired  by  their  chief.  "There  he  is  !"  said  they, 
"the  man  who  has  so  often  put  to  flight  the  armies  of  the 
faithful,  who  has  destroyed  so  many  cities,  who  has  mas- 
sacred so  many  thousand  people,  who  is  also  as  much 
dreaded  by  his  own  people  as  by  his  enemies ;  the  invincible, 
the  indefatigable  general !  "  The  discussions  which  now  took 
place,  sometimes  before  the  council,  sometimes  in  private  con- 
ference, and  which  lasted  for  three  whole  months,  related  more 
especially  to  the  four  articles  which  we  have  already  quoted. 
The  majority  of  the  council  was  favourable  to  reform,  and  an 
agreement  seemed  possible,  even  concerning  the  dogma  of  the 
Cup,  if  only  the  Chekhs  would  renounce  their  teaching  that 
communion  under  both  forms  was  indispensable  to  salvation. 
But  the  difficulty  was  to  get  the  Taborites  to  accept  the 
principle  of  ecclesiastical  authority  and  to  acknowledge  the 
value  of  a  hierarchy,  and,  in  a  spirit  of  conciliation,  the  council 
offered  to  send  a  deputation  to  Prague  to  treat  of  these  and 
other  matters  with  an  assembly  of  the  Hussites  of  Bohemia 
and  Moravia.  To  this  end,  a  special  diet  was  summoned 
to  meet  at  Prague  in  June,   1433.     But  it  was  evident  that 


196  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

the  Church  could  not  treat  with  each  sect  separately  :  the  first 
thing  necessary  was  that  the  body  of  Hussites  should  agree 
on  a  form  of  doctrine  which  should  be  accepted  as  a  com- 
promise by  all  the  various  parties ;  and  this  it  was  found 
could  not  be  done,  as  the  men  of  Prague  and  the  Taborites 
would  come  to  no  agreement  together.  The  delegates  of 
the  council  offered  to  the  men  of  Prague  provisional  tolerance 
of  the  communion  under  both  kinds,  leaving  all  other  questions 
to  be  settled  by  the  council,  in  which  Bohemia  would  be 
represented,  but  they  urged  that  a  truce  should  be  con- 
cluded at  once.  The  men  of  Prague,  on  their  side,  insisted 
that  communion  under  both  kinds  must  be  made  obligatory 
on  the  whole  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  as  the  only  means  of 
putting  an  end  to  the  various  religious  sects  in  the  country. 
The  powers  of  the  delegates  were  not  ample  enough  to  allow 
of  such  a  concession,  and  a  new  Chekh  embassy  set  out  for 
Basle,  to  treat  directly  with  the  council.  ^Meantime  no  truce 
was  proclaimed,  and  the  Hussites  continued  to  ravage  Hun- 
gary, while  they  boldly  laid  siege  to  the  town  of  Plzen,  which 
had  remained  the  stronghold  of  Catholicism  in  the  kingdom  of 
Bohemia.  In  the  midst  of  these  perpetual  civil  wars,  the 
Chekhs  were  strong  enough  to  lend  an  army  of  eight  thousand 
men  to  the  king  of  Poland  to  help  him  in  his  struggle  against 
the  Teutonic  knights,  and  the  terror  of  the  name  of  Hussite 
thus  spread  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  and  the  very  walls  of 
Dantzig. 

The  siege  of  Plzen  proved  a  slow  matter,  and  the  besieging 
army,  accustomed  to  live  in  plenty  on  the  lands  of  foreigners, 
dwindled  away  on  the  exhausted  soil  of  their  native  country. 
An  insurrection  broke  out  among  the  soldiers  of  Procopius,  in 
which  he  was  wounded  and  taken  prisoner  by  the  men  he  had 
so  often  led  to  victory.  He  gave  up  the  command  to  his 
lieutenant,  Czapek  de  San.  Meantime  the  council  of  Basle 
had  sent  a  new  deputation  into  Bohemia,  bringing  with  it 
fresh  proposals  to  the  diet  of  Moravia  and  Bohemia,  which  are 
known  by  the  name  of  the  Compactata.     In  these,  the  council 


THE    COMPACTATA   REJECTED.  1 97 

offered  to  grant  the  Cup  to  those  adults  who  should  ask  for  it, 
to  consecrate  the  Utraquist  priests,  and  to  admit  in  principle 
the  three  other  articles  of  Prague,  and  only  reserved  for 
itself  the  right  of  regulating  all  matters  of  detail  with  the 
assistance  of  the  representatives  of  the  Chekh  Church.  The 
Chekh  clergy  divided  into  two  parties,  that  of  John  de  Pribram, 
who  were  inclined  to  accept  these  proposals,  and  that  of  John 
de  Rokycana,  who  maintained  that  communion  under  both 
forms  must  be  obligatory.  This  party  prevailed.  The  Com- 
pactata  were  rejected;  the  delegates  of  the  council  left  Prague 
in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1434,  and  the  war  was  begun 
again  with  as  much  fury  as  ever. 

The  whole  of  Christendom  was  now  called  upon  to  take 
part  in  the  struggle  against  Bohemia,  a  tax  being  laid  by  the 
council  on  all  the  Catholic  clergy  in  aid  of  the  Chekh  Catholics, 
more  especially  those  of  the  town  of  Plzen.  The  money  pro- 
duced by  this  tax  w'as  used  to  buy  over  some  of  the  besieger?, 
by  whose  treachery  the  town  was  revictualled  just  in  time  to 
save  it,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the  struggle  was  to  go  on  for  ever. 
In  the  month  of  April,  1434,  the  permanent  committee  of  the 
Estates  summoned  a  diet,  in  order  by  its  help  to  make  one 
more  effort  to  restore  peace.  It  decreed  that  from  that  time 
forward  only  one  army  should  be  maintained  at  the  expense  of 
the  nation,  and  called  upon  the  Taborites  and  Orphans  to  dis- 
band their  troops  or  allow  them  to  join  the  new  army.  But 
this  measure,  far  from  attaining  its  aim,  was  only  the  signal  for 
a  new  phase  in  the  civil  war.  In  Prague,  the  New  To\mi 
(Nove-Mesto),  which  had  been  long  occupied  by  the  Taborites, 
refused  to  agree  to  the  general  peace  which  was  accepted  by 
the  Old  Town.^  The  army  raised  by  the  Estates  thereupon 
entered  Prague,  on  the  side  of  Kourim,  and  forced  the  rebels 
to  obey.     At  this  news  the  Taborites  raised  the  siege  of  Plzen, 

'  Prague  was  really  composed  of  three  towns  :  the  Old  Town  (Stare- 
Mesto,  Altstadt),  the  New  Town  (Nove-Mesto,  Nciistadt),  and,  on  the  left 
jjank  of  the  Vltava,  the  Mala-Strana  (KIcinscite),  above  which  was  the 
district  of  Hradcany  (Ilradschin).  The  old  town  was  especially  inhabited 
!))•  the  Germans,  the  new  by  the  Slavs. 


198  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

and  marched  on  Prague,  once  more  with  their  old  leader,  Pro- 
copius,  at  their  head.  But  the  army  of  the  Utraquists  had 
meanwhile  been  strengthened  by  the  addition  of  all  the 
Catholic  troops.  The  two  armies  met  at  Lipany,  near  the 
town  of  Cesky  Brod  (Bohmisch  Brod,  the  Ford  of  the  Chekhs), 
on  the  30th  of  jNIay,  1434.  The  struggle  was  terrible;  until  at 
last,  by  a  pretended  flight  of  their  enemies,  the  Taborites  were 
induced  to  leave  their  war-chariots  and  fight  in  the  open  field, 
when,  after  performing  prodigies  of  valour,  Procopius  was 
beaten.  According  to  ^Eneas  Sylvius,  he  was  tired  of  conquer- 
ing rather  than  conquered.  He  was  slain,  and  with  him 
sixteen  thousand  Taborites,  the  flower  of  his  army.  Chekhs 
could  only  be  conquered  by  Chekhs.  The  remnant  of  these 
troops,  once  so  formidable,  took  shelter  behind  the  walls  of 
Tabor  and  some  other  of  the  confederated  towns ;  but  many  of 
them  soon  after  left  the  confederation,  and  submitted  to  the 
authority  of  the  Estates. 

TJie  Compadaia  (1436) — TJic  Result  of  the  Hussite  Wan — 
Death  of  Sigisviund  (1437). 

After  the  victory  of  Lipany  the  Estates  met  again  in  a  new 
diet,  and  entered  into  negociations  with  Sigismund.  They 
could  no  longer  count  on  help  from  Poland.  King  Wladislaw 
Jagellon  was  dead ;  his  son,  Wladislaw  III.,  was  only  ten  years 
of  age,  and  his  inheritance  was  disputed  by  some  of  the  Polish 
nobles.  Sigismund  went  to  Ratisbon  to  meet  the  envoys  of 
Bohemia.  An  embassy  from  the  council  of  Basle  was  also  in 
Ratisbon  at  the  time,  but  the  Bohemian  envoys  had  no  power 
to  treat  with  them ;  their  mission  was  to  announce  to  Sigis- 
mund that  the  estates  were  ready  to  make  peace  with  him  on 
condition  that  he  would  recognize  the  liberties  of  their  country, 
and  promise  to  obtain  from  the  council  the  right  to  communion 
under  both  kinds  for  Bohemia  and  Moravia.  The  king  quickly 
agreed  to  the  first  point,  and  invited  the  envoys  to  treat  directly 
with  the  council  as  to  the  second.  Subsequently  at  a  diet  held 
in  Prague,  the  Utraquists  moderated  their  demands,  and  agreed 


THE   COM  PACT  ATA   ACCEPTED.  1 99 

to  insist  only  on  the  use  of  the  Cup  for  those  churches  where 
it  was  already  in  use.  They  also  asked  that  Bohemia  and 
Moravia  should  have  power  to  elect  an  archbishop  and  bishops. 
In  1435,  another  meeting  took  place  at  Brno  (Briinn) 
between  Sigismund  and  the  delegates  of  Bohemia  and  those  of 
the  council.  The  council  was  still  unwilling  to  recognize  the 
existence  of  the  Utraquist  Church ;  they  were  only  ready  to 
allow  that  in  each  parish  the  sacrament  of  the  altar  should  be 
administered  to  each  member  of  the  church  with  or  without  the 
Cup  as  each  one  pleased,  and  that  the  archbishop  and  bishops 
should  undertake  to  administer  under  one  or  both  kinds,  and 
to  consecrate  both  Catholic  and  Utraquist  priests.  The  Bo- 
hemian delegates  refused  this  proposal,  and  threatened  to  quit 
Brno.  Whether  they  were  supported  in  this  refusal  by  Sigis- 
mund is  doubtful,  as  the  part  he  played  is  ambiguous ;  but  it 
was  owing  to  his  persuasion  that  a  new  meeting  was  agreed  on, 
which  w'as  to  take  place  at  Szekes  Fejervar  (Stuhlweissenburg), 
in  Hungary.  Meanwhile,  the  Estates  of  Bohemia  drew  up  a 
list  of  all  the  parishes  in  the  kingdom,  both  Catholic  and 
Utraquist,  and,  with  the  help  of  tlie  Utraquist  clergy,  pro- 
ceeded to  choose  an  archbishop  and  two  bishops.  Their  first 
choice  fell  on  John  of  Rokycana ;  but  the  council  refused  to 
ratify  this  election,  and  appointed  Philibert  of  Coutances,  one 
of  their  delegates,  as  provisional  administrator  of  the  see.  At 
the  conference  held  at  Szekes  Fejervar,  peace  was  at  last  con- 
cluded ;  Sigismund  had  made  the  delegates  of  the  council 
understand  that  the  first  thing  necessary  was  that  he  should 
be  restored  to  his  inheritance,  and  that  once  in  the  kingdom 
he  would  be  able  to  bring  it  back  to  the  true  religion.  He 
did  not  venture,  however,  to  proclaim  in  Prague  itself  a  treaty 
which  he  well  knew  he  could  never  fulfil.  The  Compactata 
were  solemnly  proclaimed  at  Jihlava  (Iglau),  in  Moravia,  in 
1436.  By  it  the  council  for  a  time  tolerated  the  use  of  the 
Cup,  and  the  existence  of  an  Utraquist  clergy,  and  the  four 
articles  of  Prague  were  also  accepted.  The  emperor-king 
promised  by  a  royal  letter  to  observe  the  articles  of  Prague ; 


200  inSTOKY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

to  allow  Hussite  preachers  at  his  court;  to  grant  a  general 
amnesty  for  all  acts  committed  during  the  wars ;  to  appoint 
no  foreigner  to  a  public  office  ;  to  govern  henceforward  with 
the  help  of  a  council  nominated  by  the  diet;  and  to  take 
measures  for  assuring  the  prosperity  of  the  university  of  Prague. 
Thus  was  peace  concluded  between  l>ohemia  and  Christen- 
dom, and  Sigismund  at  last  was  able  to  enter  the  town  of 
Prague,  which  for  so  many  years  had  known  no  king. 

And  thus  ended  that  great  conflagration  which  had  been 
set  alight  by  the  flames  round  the  stake  of  John  Hus. 
Bohemia  had  shown  Europe  the  astounding  sight  of  a  people 
placing  its  religion  and  patriotism  before  all  its  interests,  and 
doubling  its  strength  by  enthusiasm.  Were  the  results  of  the 
enormous  efforts  she  had  made  in  any  way  equal  to  the  sacri- 
fices ?  AVhat  had  become  of  the  reforms  for  which  Zizka  and 
his  followers  had  so  bravely  fought  ?  It  is  true  the  Catholic 
Church  in  Bohemia  had  lost  some  of  her  possessions,  but  they 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  avaricious  nobles  on  whom  the 
clergy  would  have  to  depend  in  the  future.  The  intellect  of 
the  country  had  abandoned  the  practical  ground  of  morality 
and  discipline  to  occupy  itself  with  nice  questions  of  dogma. 
Religious  controversy  had  inflamed  men's  minds  in  Bohemia 
as  long  before  it  had  done  in  Byzantium.  The  reconciliation 
of  Bohemia  with  the  Catholic  Church  was  still  incomplete, 
for  the  council  had  by  no  means  granted  all  the  Utraquists 
demanded,  and  these  latter,  misled  by  the  promises  of  Sigis- 
mund, vainly  expected  further  concessions.  The  pope,  too, 
had  not  yet  ratified  the  Compactata. 

Politically  also  the  Hussite  movement  had  not  been  so 
productive  of  good  as  might  have  been  expected.  It  had 
secured  one  important  advantage  for  the  Chekh  nation  by 
delaying  for  a  long  time  the  Gennanizmg  of  the  country ;  but 
in  spite  of  its  popular  and  democratic  beginnings,  it  had  ended 
in  the  triumph  of  the  nobles,  who  were  now  more  powerful 
than  ever.  The  king  had  been  obliged  to  pledge  or  sell  to 
them,  or  else  to  allow  them  to  seize  almost  all  the  crown 


DEATH  OF  SIGISMUXD.  201 

lands,  and  it  was  impossible  to  get  these  back.  Many  of  tlie 
estates  of  the  Church  liad  also  passed  into  their  hands,  and 
the  crown,  which  had  been  accustomed  to  receive  from  the 
Church  taxes  or  contributions  in  time  of  war  which  could  be 
obtained  without  the  consent  of  the  diets,  now  saw  this 
source  of  revenue  at  an  end.  The  equiUbrium  between  the 
power  of  the  king  and  that  of  the  nobles  was  destroyed. 
Among  foreign  nations,  the  name  of  the  Bohemians  had  become 
to  the  Catholics  a  name  of  hatred  and  contempt,  as  we  see 
from  the  name  Bohemians  being  applied  to  the  gypsies  and  to 
the  Fragucrie  ^  in  Paris.  What  did  remain  to  Bohemia  was  a 
vigorous  national  vitality,  a  religious  enthusiasm,  and  an 
austere  morality  which  we  find  reflected  in  some  of  her  writers, 
teachers,  and  politicians,  such  as  Peter  of  Chelcic,  Komensky 
and  Charles  of  Zerotin,  and,  above  all,  in  the  lofty  ideal  of 
the  sect  of  Bohemian  Brothers,  among  whom  we  find  perhaps 
the  best  result  of  the  Hussite  movement. 

Sigismund  lived  but  a  short  time  after  his  restoration.  He 
died  at  the  end  of  the  year  1437.  The  few  months  he  spent 
on  the  throne  of  Bohemia  were  full  of  bitterness.  He  found 
it  impossible  to  fulfil  the  engagements  he  had  entered  into  with 
the  Utraquists  and  the  council ;  he  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  election  of  John  of  Rokycana  as  bishop,  and  sought 
the  support  of  the  party  of  John  of  Pribram,  in  order  to  keep 
the  balance  even  between  them.  The  archbishopric  of  Prague 
remained  vacant.  The  Utraquist  Church  was  governed  by  an 
administrator  and  a  consistory  of  the  parish  priests  of  Prague, 
all  chosen  from  the  party  of  John  of  Pribram  ;  the  Catholic 
Church  by  the  metropolitan  chapter  and  the  French  bishop 
Philibert,  by  whom  the  priests  of  both  churches  were  conse- 
crated. When  Philibert  died,  the  chapter  chose  an  adminis- 
trator. But  the  bishop  of  Olomouc  (Olmutz),  nothwithstanding 
the  Compactata,  refused  to  consecrate  those  who  would  not 

'  The  league  cf  the  French  nobles  against  Charles  MI.  in  1439. 
"Their  league  was  called  the  Praguerie,  in  allusion  to  tlic  war  which  the 
Hussites  of  Prague  were  then  waging  against  the  Catholics." — Lavallee. 


202  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNG ARY. 

renounce  the  Cu[).  This  led  to  great  irritation  among  the 
partisans  of  John  of  Rokycana ;  the  latter,  no  longer  believing 
himself  safe  in  Prague,  quitted  the  city,  and  his  flight  increased 
the  discontent  among  his  followers.  The  state  of  the  country 
was  as  little  j^eaceful  as  men's  minds.  The  Taborites  had 
never  been  completely  disarmed.  On  his  arrival  in  Bohemia, 
the  king  had  agreed  to  terms  with  their  leader,  the  priest 
Bedrich  of  Straznice,  by  which  he  granted  to  the  town  of 
Tabor  the  privileges  of  a  royal  city,  and  to  the  Taborites 
the  temporary  exercise  of  their  religion.  Some  of  their  bands 
had,  however,  refused  to  accept  the  peace,  and  had  taken 
possession  of  the  castle  of  Sion,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Kutna  Hora.  The  king  captured  this  castle,  and  had  the 
chief,  Rohac,  and  fifty-six  of  his  followers  hanged.  This 
roused  the  indignation  of  the  Taborites,  and  Bedrich  of 
Straznice  had  just  renewed  the  war  at  the  time  of  Sigismund's 
death. 

With  Sigismund  ended  the  male  line  of  the  house  of 
Luxemburg,  which  had  given  three  emperors  to  the  Holy 
Roman  empire  and  two  kings  of  the  Romans  ;  which  had 
supplied  four  kings  to  Bohemia,  dukes  to  Luxemburg,  elec- 
tors to  Brandenburg,  a  dynasty  of  margraves  to  Moravia,  and 
one  king  to  Hungary.  Had  Sigismund  lived  in  quieter  and 
happier  times,  he  might  have  brought  about  that  close  union 
between  Hungary  and  Bohemia  which  is  the  foundation  of  the 
Austrian  State.  "  These  princes  of  the  House  of  Luxemburg," 
says  Hofler,  "  cannot  be  called  great  kings  ;  but  they  pos- 
sessed buoyant  and  elastic  characters  which  never  allowed 
them  to  be  beaten  by  any  stroke  of  fortune.  If  one  enterprise 
failed,  they  were  ready  with  another.  They  w^ere  fitted  to  exert 
a  most  varied  influence  over  their  time,  with  an  activity  which 
made  itself  felt  throughout  the  whole  of  Europe  ;  without, 
perhaps,  knowing  how  to  bring  together  or  to  maintain  and 
concentrate  the  various  elements  of  the  peoples  under  their 
rule  ....  They  were  a  race  not  without  ideas  j  above  all, 
they  were  a  race  full  of  activity." 


CHAPTER  XIIL 

I30HE:\IIA    under   GEORGE    of    PODIEBRAD    (1437-147  i) — THE 
JAGELLON    DYNASTY  (1471-1526). 

Albert  of  Austria  (1438-1439) — Vladislav  the  PostJiumous 
(1439-1447)— Cd'^/'^'-t'  of  Podicbrad  (1444). 

SiGiSMUND  left  no  male  heir,  and  the  direct  line  of  the  house  of 
Luxemburg  ended  \vith  him.  On  his  death,  Bohemia  and 
Hungary  reverted  to  Albert  V.  of  Austria,  his  son-in-Ia\v,  in 
virtue  of  the  treaties  of  inheritance  entered  into  by  the  houses 
of  Luxemburg  and  Habsburg.  But  these  treaties  had  been 
entered  into  in  the  reign  of  Charles  IV.,  when  the  royal 
authority  was  at  its  height ;  since  then,  Bohemia  had  learned 
how  to  do  without  a  king,  or,  when  it  had  one,  to  oblige  him 
to  carry  out  the  will  of  the  people.  Albert  V.  had  no  possessions 
beyond  Upper  and  Lower  Austria,  and  was  still  not  strong 
enough  to  seize  Bohemia  by  force,  while  Bedrich  of  Straznice 
and  the  Taborites  were  anxious  to  have  the  young  prince 
Kazimir,  brother  of  Wladislaw  HI.  of  Poland,  as  their  king. 
As  it  was  the  interest  of  Poland  to  unite  with  Bohemia,  and 
so  to  balance  the  union  of  Austria  and  Hungary,  Kazimir  was 
sent  into  Bohemia  with  an  army,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
king  of  Poland  invaded  Silesia  and  Moravia.  Notwithstanding 
this  opposition,  Albert,  however,  forced  his  way  into  the 
kingdom,  had  himself  crowned  at  Prague,  and  then  marched 
on  to  the  town  of  Tabor,  which  was  the  centre  of  resistance. 


204  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGAKV. 

The  dangers  which  threatened  hhii  were  soon  put  an  end  to 
by  the  intervention  of  pope  Eugenius  IV.  Albert  died  shortly 
afterwards  (1439),  and  four  months  after  his  death  his  widow 
gave  birth  to  a  son,  named  Vladislav  the  Posthumous.  As 
might  have  been  foreseen,  the  new-born  prince  was  not 
recognized  as  king  without  resistance.  The  opposing  parties 
agreed  that  a  sovereign  shotild  be  chosen  by  the  diet.  Prince 
Kazimir  of  Poland,  who  had  by  this  time  become  the  grand- 
duke  of  Lithuania,  renounced  all  claim  to  the  crown,  and  the 
duke  of  Bavaria,  to  whom  the  assembly  proceeded  to  offer  it,, 
had  the  wisdom  to  refuse.  Bohemia,  weary  of  the  long-con- 
tinued state  of  anarchy,  next  sought  for  a  king  among  the 
princes  of  Germany,  but  in  vain,  and  at  last  the  diet  entered 
into  negociations  with  the  queen  dowager  Elizabeth.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  mere  presence  of  a  king,  however  young,  might  be  of 
some  use  in  restoring  order  in  a  country  so  divided.  But  his 
mother  refused  to  send  the  child  to  Prague,  and  the  land  was 
left  to  govern  itself.  The  captains  of  the  circles  ruled  their 
provinces  as  best  they  could ;  not  always  successfull}',  for  the 
religious  excitement  was  by  no  means  at  an  end.  The  Utra- 
(juists  complained  that  the  i^romises  of  king  Sigismund  had 
never  been  fulfilled  ;  that  the  communion  was  only  adminis- 
tered under  one  kind ;  and  that  the  bishop  of  Olomouc  still 
refused  to  consecrate  Utraquist  priests.  At  the  same  time  the 
Utraquists  were  divided  among  themselves.  The  four  circles 
of  Kourim,  Caslav,  Chrudim,  and  Kralovec  Hradec  had  formed 
themselves  into  a  confederation  which  recognized  the  baron,. 
Ptacek  of  Perkstein,  as  its  leader,  and  John  of  Rokycana  as 
archbishop,  and  refused  all  obedience  to  the  consistory  of 
Prague,  which  had  John  of  Pribram  at  that  time  as'its  adminis- 
trator. Both  these  parties,  however,  ended  by  uniting  against 
the  Catholics,  and  even  proposed  to  join  the  Taborites  in 
forming  a  church  which  should  embrace  all  parties.  After 
endless  disputes,  however,  the  Taborite  doctrines  were  finally- 
declared  to  be  false  by  the  Utraquist  majority,  and  this  proved, 
the  death-blow  of  the  sect ;  large  numbers  of  pari.shes  deserted 


GEORGE   OF  PODIEBRAD.  205 

it,  and  l)efore  long  the  town  of  Tabor  was  left  its  last  and  unly 
refuge. 

Ptacek   of  Perkstein   died    without   having   succeeded    in 
bringing  about  the  desired  union  among  the  non-Catholics. 
His  successor  as  leader  of  the   four   circles   was   George  of 
Kunstadt,  or  of  Podiebrad  (more  correctly  written  Podiebrady). 
George  was  only  twenty-four  years  of  age,   but  in  him  were 
combined  the  linest  qualities.     According  to  tradition,  John 
Zizka  had  been  his  godfather;  like  Zizka,   he  was  a  valiant 
soldier  and  an  ardent  patriot,  and  longed  to  restore  union  and 
order  to  his  country.     "He   was,"  says  .-^^neas    Sylvius,  "a 
short,    strongly-built   man,    with    eyes    full    of  fire,    of  quiet 
manners,  infected,  it  is  true,  with  the  errors  of  the  Hussites, 
but  a  lover  of  law  and  of  justice."     He  persuaded  the  leaders 
of  the  Catholic  party  to  send  an  embassy  to  Rome  (1447),  in 
consequence  of  which  the  Holy  See  sent  Cardinal  Carvajal  on 
a  mission  to  Bohemia.     He  arrived  in  Prague  in  1448.     The 
Bohemians  begged  him  to  induce  the  pope  to  accept  the  Com- 
pactata  and  to   confirm  John  of  Rokycana  as  archbishop  of 
Prague.     But  the  cardinal   had    not  come    with   conciliatory 
intentions.     He  gave  them  to  understand   that  the  court  of 
Rome   was   resolved  to    reject    the    communion    under   both 
kinds,  and  to  appoint  a  man  of  its  own  choice  as  archbishop. 
Upon  this,  the  irritation  of  the  people  became  so  great  that 
the  cardinal  judged  it  best  to  withdraw  from  the  city.    Accord- 
ing to  the  account  of  a  contemporary,  he  carried  off  with  hini 
the  text  of  the  Compactata,  but  was  forced  to  restore  it.     His 
flight  was  the  signal  for  fresh  disturbances,  in  which  the  par- 
tisans of  Pribram  and  Rokycana  made  common  cause  against 
the  Catholics  ;  while  some  of  the  lords  of  the  party  of  Pribram, 
who  cared  less  for  the  Cup  than  for  their  own  position,  went 
over  openly  to  the  Catholic  party.     George  took  advantage  of 
the  general  confusion  to  march  on  Prague,  and  to  take  it  by 
surprise.     He  was  received  in  triumph  \  John  of  Rok}-cana  and 
John  of  Pribram  took  the  spiritual  direction  of  the  Utraquists, 
and  George  of  Podiebrad  became  de  facto  ruler  of  Bohemia. 


206  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Once  more  the  country  became  the  scene  of  bloody  wars, 
Uh-ic  of  Rosemberk,  the  chief  of  the  Catholic  party,  took  up 
arms  against  Podiebrad,  and  received  most  unexpected  help 
from  the  Taborites,  who  had  been  expelled  from  the  Utraquist 
community.  He  sought  allies  also  abroad  in  Frederick,  duke 
of  Saxony,  and  the  margrave  of  Misnia.  But  George  of  Podie- 
brad, whose  political  ability  equalled  his  military  skill,  induced 
Bavaria  and  Brandenburg  to  attack  the  Saxons  ;  while  he  him- 
self invaded  Misnia,  and  established  his  authority  on  all  sides. 
His  adversaries  tried  to  get  possession  of  the  young  king 
Vladislav,  but  Frederick  of  Austria,  his  guardian,  refused  to 
give  him  up,  and  they  were  at  last  obliged  to  consent  that  the 
diet  should  nominate  a  regent  of  the  kingdom.  The  exploits 
of  George  of  Podiebrad  and  the  power  he  had  gained  naturally 
pointed  him  out  for  the  choice  of  his  countrymen,  and  they 
bestowed  on  him  the  title  and  office  of  high  captain  of  the 
kingdom  (nejvyssi  hejtman  zemsky),  and  his  election  was  con- 
hrmed  by  the  emperor  in  145 1.  Podiebrad  knew  how  to  make 
the  authority  which  had  been  conferred  upon  him  respected. 
He  subdued  the  town  of  Tabor  and  obliged  it  to  accept 
Utraquist  priests  (August,  145 1),  besieged  Ulric  of  Rosemberk 
in  the  town  of  Budejovice,  reduced  him  to  submission,  and 
threw  the  principal  Taborite  priests  into  prison.  From  this 
time  the  sect  almost  entirely  disappears. 

The  countries,  however,  which  had  formed  outlying  pos- 
sessions of  Bohemia,  such  as  Lusatia,  Silesia,  and  Moravia, 
had  become  to  a  great  degree  detached  from  her,  and  could 
only  be  brought  once  more  into  union  by  the  coronation  of 
the  young  king.  George  succeeded  in  bringing  Vladislav  to- 
Prague,  and  there  had  him  crowned.  At  his  coronation, 
Vladislav,  who  was  now  fourteen  years  of  age,  recognized 
Podiebrad  as  his  lieutenant,  which  office  he  was  to  hold  for 
six  years,  agreed  to  the  Compactata,  and  promised  to  keep 
the  engagements  entered  into  by  Sigismund.  From  this  time,, 
the  regent,  supported  by  the  authority  of  a  crowned  king — an 
authority  which  had  been  so  long  wanting  in  Bohemia— was- 


VLADISLAV  THE  I'OSTHUMOUS.  20/ 

able  to  reorganize  the  government  of  the  countr}-.  He  re- 
estabHshed  the  courts  of  justice,  began  a  rigorous  inquiry 
into  all  misappropriations  of  land  during  the  last  thirty  3-ears, 
and  recovered  the  greater  part  of  the  crown  estates.  The 
connection  of  Moravia,  Silesia,  and  Lusatia  with  Bohemia 
had  always  been  based  on  a  personal  relation  to  the  king, 
and  these  countries  now  took  the  oath  to  Vladislav  :  the 
town  of  Vratislav  (Breslau)  alone  refused  to  send  a  repre- 
sentative to  Prague,  its  inhabitants  declining  altogether  to 
enter  an  heretical  city.  They  had  been  excited  against 
Bohemia  by  the  preaching  of  the  Italian  monk,  John  Capris- 
tan,  who  had  been  sent  by  the  pope  to  preach  a  crusade 
against  the  Turks  and  to  watch  events  in  Bohemia.  But  king 
Vladislav,  at  the  advice  of  George,  punished  this  attempted 
opposition  severely,  imposing  upon  them  a  very  heavy  fine. 
This  young  prince  had  the  greatest  confidence  in  George,  and 
liked  to  call  him  his  father.  A\'hen  the  Turks,  by  the  capture 
of  Constantinople,  terrified  the  whole  of  Christendom,  Vladislav 
was  able  to  offer  forty  thousand  men  to  the  emperor  for  the 
crusade  against  them,  which,  after  all,  never  took  place.  He 
died  at  Prague  (1457)  when  on  the  point  of  celebrating  his 
marriage  with  Madeleine  of  France,  daughter  of  Charles  VII., 
who  afterwards  married  Gaston  do  Foix.  A  magnificent  em- 
bassy had  been  sent  to  Tours  to  demand  the  hand  of  the 
princess,  and  the  historians  of  Charles  VII.  have  related  its 
splendour  at  great  length,  and  describe  the  interest  felt  in  it 
by  the  Parisians  during  its  stay  in  their  capital. 

The  Reign  of  George  of  Podiebrad  (1457-1471 ) — Bohemia 
at  Peace. 

According  to  agreement,  Bohemia  ouglit  now  to  have 
returned  to  the  house  of  Habsburg.  But  the  nation  which 
had  freed  herself  did  not  consider  herself  bound  by  the 
contracts  entered  into  by  her  former  sovereigns,  ^^'hat  need 
was  there  for  Bohemia  to  seek  a  foreign  ruler,  when  she 
already  had    the   best   possible   one   at    home  ?     Everything 


208  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-ITUNGARY. 

seemed  to  point  out  George  as  the  natural  leader  of  liis 
countrymen.  A  large  numl:)er,  however,  of  competitors  for  the 
crown  presented  themselves,  and  among  them  Charles  Wl., 
king  of  I'^ance,  who  put  in  a  claim  for  his  second  son,  no 
doubt  to  make  up  for  not  seeing  his  daughter  Queen  of 
Bohemia.  Nevertheless,  George  was  almost  unanimously- 
elected,  and  Bohemia  once  more  became  her  own  mistress, 
freed  from  the  control  of  Austria  and  Hungary  ;  for  the  first 
time  since  the  days  of  the  Premyslides  she  had  a  really 
national  sovereign.  ]Moravia,  Silesia,  and  Lusatia  took  the 
oath  of  fealty  to  the  new  king,  two  towns  only,  Vratislav 
(Breslau)  and  Jilibava  (Iglau),  resisting  him  on  the  ground  of 
religion.  He  reduced  them  by  force  of  arms,  in  spite  of  the 
help  granted  to  Jihlava  by  the  emperor  Frederick.  Soon  even 
the  emperor  became  reconciled  to  George  of  Podiebrad,  and 
granted  him  the  investiture  of  the  kingdom,  at  the  same  time 
reducing  the  number  of  the  escort  which  Bohemia  was  bound 
to  furnish  for  the  imperial  expeditions  into  Italy,  from  three 
hundred  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  knights.  He  also  undertook 
never  to  interfere  in  the  internal  affiiirs  of  Bohemia.  As  king, 
George  continued  the  task  he  had  begun  as  regent,  the 
restoration  of  that  peace  and  prosperity  in  which  the  kingdom 
had  been  left  by  Charles  IV.  The  partition  and  diminution 
of  the  royal  estates  had  led  to  the  diminution  of  the  army  ;  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  impose  heavy  contributions  on  the  estates 
in  order  to  be  able  to  pay  a  well-organized  force.  Throughout 
Europe  he  acquired  the  reputation  of  a  wise  and  powerful 
monarch.  One  of  his  daughters  married  Mathias  Corvinus, 
king  of  Hungary,  and  another  Albert,  duke  of  Saxony ;  the 
latter  is  the  ancestress  of  the  present  royal  family  of  Dresden. 

But  religious  troubles  were  far  from  being  at  an  end. 
George  had  reduced  the  Taborites  to  silence,  and  those  who 
still  adhered  to  their  doctrines  practised  them  in  secret. 
Among"  this  small  remnant  had  arisen  a  new  sect,  the  brother- 
hood of  Kunwald,  so  called  from  Kunwald,  in  the  circle  of 
Hradec,  the  place  wliere  it  began.     Later  on,  this  sect  took 


THE  BOHEMIAN  BROTHERHOOD.  209 

the  name  of  the  Union,  or  ratlicr  the  Unity  of  Eohemian 
Brothers  (Jednota  bratri  Ceskych).  It  was  organized  by 
brother  Gregory,  who  was  a  member  of  a  noble  family  but  a 
poor  man.  The  Union  of  Bohemian  Brothers  broke  off  all 
connection  with  the  Roman  Church,  and  chose  their  bishops 
and  elders  from  among  the  community,  the  first  bishop  being 
consecrated  by  a  Vaudois  bishop.  Their  dogmas  were  much 
the  same  as  those  of  the  Taborites ;  but  they  had  one  decided 
advantage  over  their  fierce  jDredecessors — they  refused  to 
defend  their  faith  by  force  of  arms.  They  taught  a  strict 
morality,  and  awarded  temporal  punishments  to  all  transgres- 
sions of  duty.  This  last  article  of  their  doctrines  prevented 
them  from  developing  so  rapidly  as  they  would  otherwise 
have  done ;  but,  in  spite  of  it,  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  there  were  no  less  than  two  hundred  congregations  in 
Bohemia  and  jNIoravia  who  were  subject  to  their  bishops 
and  elders.  Considered  as  a  whole,  the  sect  of  Bohemian 
Brothers,  better  known  among  foreigners  by  the  wrong  name 
of  Moravian  Brothers,  may  be  looked  upon  as  one  of  the 
expressions  of  religious  opinion  which  does  most  honour  to 
humanity. 

But  notwithstanding  the  inoffensive  character  of  the  new 
sect,  king  George  treated  them  with  severity.  He  wished  to 
respect  the  very  letter  of  the  Compactata,  and  hoped,  by 
stifling  all  religious  innovation  in  the  germ,  to  become  the 
more  easily  reconciled  with  the  Holy  See,  but  it  was  a  most 
difficult  thing  to  establish  a  modus  vivetidi  with  the  court  of 
Rome.  Notwithstanding  the  Compactata  of  Basle,  nothing 
had  yet  been  settled  as  to  the  position  of  the  Utraquist 
Church.  In  1462,  George,  who  himself  belonged  to  it,  sent  an 
embassy  to  Rome  to  beg  the  Pope  to  ratify  the  Compactata. 
The  sovereign  pontiff  was  at  this  time  Pius  II.,  who,  under  the 
name  of  .-Eneas  Sylvius,  had  played  an  important  part  at  the 
council  of  Basle  and  in  the  subsequent  negociations  between 
the  Church  and  Bohemia.  Pius  II.  was  determined  to  bring 
Bohemia  into  complete  union  with  the  Western  Church,  and, 

p 


210  iriSTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY, 

far  from  agreeing  to  the  request  of  the  king,  he  declared  the 
Compactata  abohshed,  forbade  the  administration  of  the  com- 
munion under  both  kinds,  and  sent  a  legate,  Fantin  de  Valle, 
to  invite  George  to  abandon  the  Utraquist  faith.  Neither 
the  personal  convictions  nor  the  political  interests  of  George 
would  allow  him  to  obey  this  injunction.  If  he  had  abjured 
the  Utraquist  faith,  he  would  have  roused  at  once  against 
himself  the  greater  part  of  the  nation  he  had  with  so  much 
difficulty  restored  to  tranquillity.  He  had  Fantin  de  ^^alle 
thrown  into  prison.  On  this  Pius  II.  declared  war  against 
him,  called  upon  the  citizens  of  Vratislav  to  refuse  obedience 
to  him,  and  threatened  him  with  excommunication  (1468). 
The  death  of  this  violent  pontiff  for  some  time  suspended 
the  effect  of  the  menace,  and  his  successor,  Paul  II.,  wish- 
ing to  gain  time  and  to  be  able  to  add  material  force  to 
the  arms  of  spiritual  warfare,  entered  into  negociations  on 
the  one  side  with  the  emperor,  on  the  other  with  the 
Catholic  nobles  of  Bohemia.  No  emperor  had  ever  yet  neg- 
lected an  opportunity  of  humiliating  a  king  of  Bohemia,  and 
though  the  Bohemian  Catholics  had  no  cause  of  complaint 
against  their  king,  who  had  granted  them  complete  liberty  of 
conscience,  yet  they  began  to  find  him  too  powerful,  and  were 
not  likely  to  let  slip  an  opportunity  of  lessening  his  authority. 
One  of  their  leaders,  Zdenek  of  Sternberg,  Avho  was  grand- 
burgrave  of  the  kingdom,  was  found  ready  to  place  himself  at 
the  head  of  a  confederation — the  confederation  of  Zelena  Hora 
(Grunberg) — and  to  combine  with  the  emperor  to  second  the 
efforts  of  the  pope.  Then  pope  Paul  issued  his  anathema 
against  George  (1465).  declaring  him  a  relapsed  heretic  and 
a  spoiler  of  the  Church,  forbidding  his  subjects  to  obey  him, 
and  calling  upon  all  good  Christians  to  join  once  more  in  a 
crusade  against  the  Hussites.  The  German  princes,  however, 
with  the  exception  of  the  emperor,  were  not  disposed  to*  come 
to  Paul's  assistance,  and  the  sale  of  indulgences  and  the  hope 
of  booty  only  attracted  a  few  armed  bands,  who  brought  but 
feeble  assistance  to  the  confederates.     Only  a  few  of  the  royal 


MATHIAS  CORVINUS  ATTACKS  BOITEMLi.  211 

towns  of  Silesia  and  INIoravia,  and  a  ft-w  in  Bohemia,  together 
with  the  Cathohc  town  of  Plzen,  joined  the  rebels. 

Having  tried  in  vain  to  come  to  terms  with  the  Holy  See, 
George  now  bravely  determined  to  meet  force  with  force.  He 
appealed  to  a  future  general  council,  to  a  future  pope,  and, 
what  was  much  more  to  the  purpose,  organized  a  powerful 
army.  He  then  threw  himself  upon  his  enemies  and  captured 
their  principal  fortresses,  while  his  son  Victorin  invaded  Austria 
(146S),  to  punish  the  emperor  Frederick  on  his  own  land.  But 
at  this  moment  the  pope  roused  a  new  enemy  against  George 
Podiebrad  in  ISIathias  Corvinus,  who  was  tempted  less,  perhaps, 
by  the  honour  of  defending  the  Catholic  faith,  than  by  his  wish 
to  avenge  his  personal  injuries  and  the  hope  of  uniting  the 
crowns  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia  on  his  own  head.  The  pope 
supplied  him  with  all  that  was  needed  for  the  war,  and  he  soon 
obliged  Victorin  to  quit  Austria.  He  then  suddenly  attacked 
Moravia.  The  Catholic  towns  of  Moravia  and  Silesia  opened 
their  gates  to  him,  and  in  the  following  year  he  entered  Bohemia, 
and  penetrated  as  far  as  the  circle  of  Caslav.  But  the  Chekhs 
had  been  trained  in  the  school  of  war  for  the  last  half-century ; 
George  was  able  to  surround  his  enemies,  and  to  oblige  Mathias 
to  sign  a  truce  at  Vilemov.  Mathias,  freed  by  the  Holy  See 
from  the  obligation  to  observe  the  armistice,  again  took  up 
arms,  and  invading  Moravia,  pushed  on  the  war  with  the  most 
savage  cruelty,  cutting  off  the  heads  of  his  Chekh  prisoners 
and  throwing  them  into  the  enemy's  camp  by  means  of  cata- 
pults. He  even  summoned  a  meeting  of  his  partisans  at  Olo- 
mouc,  and  had  himself  proclaimed  king  of  Bohemia ;  but  the 
Chekh  army  coming  up  with  him,  pursued  him  across  Lusatia, 
Silesia,  and  Moravia,  and  finally  drove  him  back  into  Hungar)'. 
The  towns,  however,  which  he  had  garrisoned  remained  true 
to  him,  and  George,  ill  and  without  allies,  began  to  fear  the 
dismemberment  of  his  kingdom. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  he  might  best  secure  the  liberty  of 
Bohemia  by  offering  the  crown  to  a  foreign  prince,  and,  though 
he  had  two  sons,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  sacrifice  the  interests 


212  IIIS'J'ORY  OF  AUSTRO- HUNGARY. 

of  his  family  to  the  higher  interests  of  his  country.  He  might 
have  secured  the  throne  for  one  of  these  sons  ;  he  preferred  to 
offer  it  to  Kasimir,  king  of  Poland,  and  persuaded  Bohemia  to 
accept  Kasimir  as  his  successor.  This  act  of  disinterested 
patriotism  was  the  last  of  his  life.  He  died  in  the  year  147 1, 
in  his  fifty-second  year,  a  few  weeks  after  the  death  of  John 
of  Rokycana. 

His  early  death  prevented  George  from  carrying  out  his 
great  projects.  He  had  dreamed  of  nothing  less  than  the 
establishment  of  a  kind  of  tribunal  formed  of  the  principal 
sovereigns  of  Europe,  before  which  each  one  amongst  them 
might  appeal  for  justice  either  against  the  aggressions  of  other 
sovereigns,  those  of  their  subjects,  or  those  of  the  Church. 
In  the  hope  of  realizing  this  dream,  which  was  so  far  in 
advance  of  his  age,  he  had  sent  an  embassy  to  Louis  XI. 
(1464),  a  curious  account  of  which  in  the  Chekli  language  has 
come  down  to  us.  He  begged  the  French  monarch,  as  Most 
Christian  King  ^  and  as  a  prince  devoted  to  the  general  welfare, 
to  convoke  an  assembly  of  kings  and  princes,  which  was 
to  work  together  for  the  glory  of  God,  the  good  of  the  uni- 
versal Church,  and  the  independence  of  nations.  A  chi- 
merical project,  which  Henry  IV.  was  to  entertain  later  on, 
and  with  no  better  success  than  befel  George  !  At  the  very 
moment  that  the  pope  was  exciting  Christendom  against  him, 
George  was  meditating  a  crusade  of  the  whole  of  Europe 
against  the  Turks.  By  his  patriotism  and  his  virtues,  this  king, 
a  son  of  the  Chekh  nation,  far  surpassed  the  most  illustrious 
of  the  foreign  princes  who  had  reigned  over  his  country. 
He  had  the  help  of  able  ministers,  among  whom  we  ought 
especially  to  mention  the  Frenchman,  Antoine  Marini  of 
Grenoble,  and  the  two  Chekhs,  Kostka  and  Albert  of  Postu- 
pice.  The  German,  (iregory  of  Heimburg,  also  gave  him  the 
help  of  his  rare  dialectic  talent  and  a  genius  for  diplomacy  in 
advance  of  the  times  in  his  struggle  against  the  Church  of 
Rome. 

'  Kefcrrinr  to  the  official  title  of  the  kincf  of  France. 


IVLAD  YSLA  W  JA  GlELLO.  2 1 3 

Wladyslaiu  JagicUo  (1471-1516) — Increased  Poivcr  of  the 

Nobles. 

According  to  the  engagements  entered  into  in  the  reign  of 
George  of  Podiebrad,  the  Utraquists  of  Bohemia  proceeded  to 
elect  as  their  king  Wladyslaw  ^  of  Poland,  then  sixteen  years 
of  age.  He  took  possession  of  the  throne  after  promising  to 
secure  the  observance  of  the  Compactata,  and  brought  some 
thousands  of  soldiers  to  the  help  of  Bohemia.  IMathias  con- 
tinued the  war,  and  in  the  years  147 1  and  1472  invaded 
Bohemia,  but  could  not  get  beyond  Kutna  Hora.  It  would 
have  been  far  wiser  for  him  to  have  turned  his  Hungarian 
forces  against  the  Turks,  who  had  now  conquered  the  Balkan 
peninsula,  and  threatened  to  invade  the  valley  of  the  Upper 
Danube.  The  successor  of  Paul  II.,  pope  Sixtus  IV.,  Avho 
knew  what  were  the  true  interests  of  Christendom,  obliged  the 
two  kings  to  sign  a  truce,  which  was  to  last  two  years  and  a 
half;  but  Mathias  was  as  little  loyal  to  Wladyslaw  as  he  had 
been  to  his  predecessor,  and  did  not  long  observe  it,  again 
invading  JSIoravia  and  Silesia.  The  war  did  not  come  to  an 
end  till  the  peace  of  Olomouc  (1478),  by  which  Mathias  at 
last  received  the  fruit  of  his  perseverance.  By  the  help  of  the 
emperor  he  then  obtained  the  title  of  king  of  Bohemia  ;  this 
was  a  completely  illusory  title,  only  securing  to  him  the  crown 
in  case  Wladyslaw  should  chance  to  die  ;  but  he  also  secured 
Lusatia,  Moravia,  and  Silesia  for  his  lifetime;  Wladyslaw,  if 
he  survived  Mathias,  having  the  right  of  re-claiming  these 
provinces  on  the  payment  of  a  fine  of  400,000  ducats.  Thus 
these  wars,  which  had  been  undertaken  in  the  name  of  religion, 
ended  in  a  mere  bargain  for  the  possession  of  land. 

On  his  accession,  the  young  king  of  Bohemia  found  himself 
confronted  by  a  proud  and  selfish  nobility,  with  an  exhausted 
territory  and  an  empty  treasury.  After  the  batde  of  Lipany, 
the  nobles  had  never  been  able  to  secure  for  themselves  all 

'  The  Polish  spelling  of  this  name  is  Wladyslaw  Jagiello  ;  the  Bo- 
hemians spell  the  former  Vladislav,  and  the  Magyars  Laszlo. 


2  14  ins  TORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

the  advantages  tliey  had  hoped,  as  George  of  Podiebrad  had 
always  looked  for  support  to  the  lower  classes,  the  zemane  or 
squires,  and  had  held  the  aristocracy  in  check.  Now  the 
nobles  got  the  upper  liand,  and  from  the  reign  of  Wladyslaw 
dates  the  legalized  oppression  of  the  people.  Taking  ad- 
vantage of  the  weakness  of  the  king,  the  nobles  secured  the 
recognition  in  the  law-courts  of  the  principle  that  a  peasant 
had  no  right  to  sue  his  lord,  and  to  the  burdens  which 
already  weighed  down  the  agricultural  class  they  added  that 
of  making  them  serfs  of  the  soil,  by  taking  from  the  peasant 
the  right  of  leaving  the  place  where  he  was  born.  They 
also  appropriated  to  themselves  the  most  monstrous  mono- 
polies, as  for  instance  that  of  making  and  selling  all  the 
l)eer  used  by  the  peasants,  and  even  endeavoured  to  restrict 
the  privileges  of  the  towns,  thus  giving  rise  to  internal  struggles 
in  which  the  young  king  was  more  than  once  obliged  to  take 
part,  and  in  which  the  crown  lost  prestige  and  the  peace  of 
the  kingdom  was  disturbed. 

Wladyslaw  was  more  fortunate  in  putting  an  end  to  religious 
difficulties.  In  his  reign,  the  Catholics  and  Utraquists  agreed 
to  a  solemn  reconciliation,  which  took  place  at  a  diet  held  at 
Kutna  Hora  (1485).  The  two  parties  undertook  to  observe 
the  Compactata  of  Prague  and  the  engagements  entered  into 
by  King  Sigismund.  From  this  time  these  two  covenants 
became  part  of  the  laws  of  the  state,  and  the  kings  had  to 
swear  to  obey  them  as  part  of  the  coronation  oath.  Wladyslaw 
tried  in  vain  to  obtain  a  confirmation  of  the  Com2:)actata  from 
Alexander  VI.  Under  these  circumstances  the  Utraquist 
party  lost  ground  rapidly,  and  its  clergy  became  few  in  number, 
as  the  bishops  of  Olomouc  had  refused,  since  the  quarrel  of 
George  with  pope  Pius  II.,  to  consecrate  any  priest  who  would 
not  promise  to  give  up  the  administration  of  the  wine.  Candi- 
dates were  obliged  to  seek  consecration  in  foreign  lands,  or 
else  to  receive  it  by  tortuous  means,  and  most  frequently  at  the 
price  of  perjury.  Now  and  then  a  foreign  bishop  was  with 
great  difficulty  persuaded  to  come  to   Bohemia   to  officiate. 


STATE   OF  THE  BOHEMIAN  CHURCH.  21  5 

Thus,  while  it  became  exceedingly  difficult  for  the  Utraquists 
to  obtain  a  high-minded  clergy,  men  with  no  real  vocation  and 
mere  adventurers  obtained  admission  without  difficulty  into 
the  Church.  This  state  of  things  was  naturally  followed  by  the 
most  serious  falling-off  in  morality.  John  of  Rokycana  was  no 
longer  there  to  support  his  disciples  by  the  authority  of  his 
teaching  and  his  example ;  and,  added  to  all  this,  the  Utraquist 
Estates  claimed  the  right  of  nominating  the  members  of  the 
consistories,  and  so  reduced  their  priests  to  a  kind  of  servitude. 

In  the  midst  of  this  decay,  the  sect  of  Bohemian  Brothers 
had  decided  the  difficulty  about  the  hierarchy  by  suppressing 
it  altogether,  and  by  their  lives  of  strict  morality  were  a  con- 
stant reproach  to  the  established  Churches,  They  daily 
increased  in  number,  especially  in  the  circles  of  Hradec, 
Boleslav,  and  Chrudim.  The  place  of  assembly  for  their  elders 
was  the  town  of  Mlada  Boleslav  (Jung  Biinzlaw).  They  could 
not  escape  persecution ;  Catholics  and  Utraquists  joined  in 
denouncing  the  Picards,  as  they  were  called,  to  the  king,  and 
AVladyslaw  forbade  their  worship  ;  but  they  continued  to  meet 
in  secret. 

In  the  year  1490,  Wladyslaw  was  elected  king  of  Hungary, 
and,  tired  of  Bohemia,  he  went  to  live  at  Festh,  where 
he  always  afterwards  remained.  The  crowns  of  Bohemia 
and  Hungary  were  once  more  united  on  one  head,  but  the 
union  produced  no  great  advantage  for  either  country. 
Wladyslaw  was  the  first  Chekh  king  who  did  not  reside  in 
Prague,  and  from  this  date  the  ancient  capital  began  to  lose 
some  of  its  importance.  In  order  to  secure  the  throne  for  his 
family,  Wladyslaw  had  his  son  Louis  crowned  in  1509,  though 
he  was  then  only  three  years  of  age.  Wladyslaw  died  in  15 16. 
He  had  married  Anne  de  Foix,  who  was  related  to  Louis  XII. 
of  France. 

Louis  (1516-1526) — The  Reformation  of  Luther  in  Bohemia. 

Louis  was  ten  years  old  when  he  came  to  the  throne. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  fact  that  the  Bohemian  throne  was 


2l6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

SO  often  ascended  by  princes  under  age  greatly  facilitated  the 
encroachments  of  the  nobility  ui)on  the  royal  power.  On  the 
death  of  Wladyslaw,  Zdenek  Leo,  of  Rozmital,  who  was  grand- 
burgrave  of  Prague,  undertook  to  govern,  with  the  help  of 
some  of  the  highest  officers  of  the  late  king  ;  the  Estates  were 
still  quarrelling  among  themselves,  but  in  the  year  15 17  they 
came  to  terms,  and  it  was  agreed  that  the  towns — that  is  to  say, 
the  citizens  who  dwelt  in  them — ^should  be  allowed  to  vote  at 
the  diets.  The  representative  system  which  was  established  at 
this  period  continued  almost  down  to  the  present  time.  It  was 
at  this  date  that  the  two  towns  of  Prague,  the  old  and  the  new, 
united,  in  order  to  be  the  better  able  to  resist  the  claims  of  the 
nobles.  This  agreement,  which  was  named  the  Convention  of 
St.  Vacslav,  from  the  day  on  which  it  was  proclaimed,  did  not 
however,  succeed  in  putting  an  end  to  the  feelings  of  hatred 
between  the  classes,  nor  to  the  conflicts  between  them.  More 
than  once  the  towns  and  the  nobles  came  to  blows  ;  castles 
were  captured  by  the  citizens,  and  nobles  were  beheaded  in 
Prague.  The  king  paid  a  visit  to  this  city  in  the  year  1522, 
when  he  tried  to  restore  peace  by  appointing  new  officers  tO' 
the  crown ;  he  afterwards  proceeded  to  levy  taxes-  for  a  war 
against  the  Turks. 

Meantime  the  religious  difficulties,  which  had  been  thought 
to  be  at  an  end,  began  again  worse  than  ever.  In  15  21, 
Luther  began  to  preach  the  Reformation  in  Germany,  and, 
strangely  enough,  the  new  doctrines  were  received  with 
enthusiasm  by  those  very  German  towns  in  Bohemia  which 
had  so  lately  been  the  strongholds  of  Catholicism.  The  Chekhs, 
who  had  for  so  long  a  time  been  irritated  by  the  Holy  See, 
could  not  fail  to  greet  the  new  doctrines  with  sympathy.  For 
a  long  time  they  had  hoped  to  be  able  to  preserve  the  use  of 
the  Cup  and  yet  to  remain  in  union  with  the  Church,  but  the 
papacy  had  remained  deaf  to  their  prayers.  The  new  Protes- 
tantism recalled  the  old  traditions  of  the  Hussites,  and  Luther 
seemed  to  be  carrying  on  the  work  of  the  Martyr  of  Constance  ; 
he  did  not  insist   on  the  rigorous  morality  of  the  Bohemian 


PROGRESS  OF  THE  REFORMERS.  21/ 

Brothers  ;  he  was  at  open  quarrel  with  the  pope.  All  this 
could  not  fail  to  make  his  teaching  very  welcome.  The 
Utraquist  priests  at  once  began  to  preach  his  doctrines,  and, 
from  the  year  1523,  their  synod  added  to  their  confession  of 
faith  several  articles  borrowed  from  the  Lutheran  formularies. 
A  friend  of  Luther's,  the  priest  Cahera,  was  appointed  adminis- 
trator of  the  church  of  Tyn,  at  Prague,  and  the  separation 
from  the  Roman  Church  became  wider  than  ever. 

It  would  take  too  much  time  to  relate  the  tumults  of 
which  the  city  of  Prague  now  became  the  scene.  At  this 
period  the  religious  history  of  Bohemia  enters  into  a  new- 
phase,  during  which  the  nation  was  guilty  of  such  excesses  as 
merited  punishment  at  the  hands  of  a  tyrant ;  the  lawless 
character  of  the  Chekh  nobles  found  ample  scope  in  these 
perpetual  troubles,  Avhich  have  but  small  interest  for  us,  though 
their  heroes  have  remained  popular  in  Bohemia  down  to  the 
present  time.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  death  of  Louis  at 
the  battle  of  Mohacs  (1526)  was  partly  due  to  the  obstinate 
and  factious  spirit  of  the  nobles,  who  would  not  grant  their 
sovereign  that  help  against  the  Turks  of  which  he  stood  in 
need  ;  but  their  narrow  egotism  and  want  of  patriotic  feeling 
were  destined  to  be  cruelly  punished. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

HUNGARY    UNDP:R    THE    HOUSE    OF   ANJOU    (1310-1388)  — 
THE    ELECTIVE    :M0NARCHY    (1388-1444). 

Charles  Robert  of  Anjou  (1310-1342). 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  provinces  of  France  gave  its  name 
to  the  dynasty  which  replaced  the  Arpads  on  the  throne  of 
Hungary.  Charles,  Count  of  Provence,  of  Anjou,  and  of 
Maine,  and  brother  of  St.  Louis,  when  on  his  return  from  the 
crusades,  had  been  invited  by  pope  Urban  IV.  to  conquer 
the  Two  Sicilies ;  and  after  defeating  the  German  princes, 
Conradin  and  Manfred,  in  1268,  he  had  succeeded  in  estab- 
lishing himself  at  Naples.  But  he  dreamed  of  vaster  destinies 
for  his  family.  He  saw  that,  by  obtaining  possession  of  Hun- 
gary, with  its  Adriatic  coast-line,  it  would  be  possible  to  create 
one  of  the  greatest  powers  on  the  Mediterranean.  With  this 
end  in  view  he  concluded  a  double  alliance  with  the  royal 
house  of  Arpad,  Laszlo  the  Cuman  marrying  Isabella  of 
Naples,  and  Charles  the  Lame,  the  future  king  of  the  Two 
Sicilies,  Mary,  the  daughter  of  Stephen  V.  Thus  the  nephew 
of  St.  Louis  became  very  closely  related  to  the  race  of  Arpad. 
But  it  was  also  closely  connected  by  family  alliance  with 
Bohemia  and  Bavaria,  whose  rulers  equally  laid  claim  to  the 
throne  of  Hungary  when  it  was  left  vacant  by  the  death  of 
Andrew  III.  in  1301.  The  pope,  Boniface  VIII.,  preferred 
the  French  candidate.  Boniface  proudly  recalled  the  fact  that 
.St.  Stephen  had  done  homage  for  his  kingdom  to  the  See  of 


CHARLES  ROBERT  OF  AXJOU.  2\(J 

Rome,  and  through  his  legate,  the  Bishop  of  Olomouc,  he  now 
called  upon  the  Hungarian  prelates  to  recognize  Charles 
Robert  of  Anjou  as  their  king,  and  Charles  was  crowned  at 
Esztergom  (Gran).  Notwithstanding  the  papal  commands, 
some  of  the  nobles  sided  with  Vacslav  of  Bohemia,  and  the 
latter  entering  Hungary,  and  pushing  forward  as  far  as  P2sz- 
tergom,  had  himself  also  crowned  by  the  archbishop  of 
Kalocsa.  He  was  however  almost  immediately  afterwards 
recalled  to  Bohemia  by  the  death  of  his  fother  (1305),  and 
found  himself  obliged  to  give  up  all  claim  to  Hungary.  Then 
Otto  of  Bavaria  presented  himself,  and  found  some  partisans 
among  the  Saxons  of  Transylvania,  led  by  their  voievode, 
Ladislas  Apor.  It  was  not  before  the  year  13 10,  that  Charles 
Robert  really  became  king,  and  even  then  he  had  to  take  up 
arms  against  the  dynast,  or  petty  king,  Mathew  Csak  of 
Trencin,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  his  vassals  in  the 
country  of  the  Slovaks,  who  laid  claim  to  complete  inde- 
pendence. 

Charles  Robert  retook  Belgrade  from  the  Servian  princes  : 
entered  into  an  alliance  with  Frederick  of  Austria  against 
the  emperor  Louis  of  Bavaria  (1322) ;  restored  order  among 
the  Cumans ;  and  pacified  the  Saxons  who  had  revolted. 
His  foreign  policy  was  more  ambitious  than  had  been  that  of 
the  Arpads.  He  could  not  forget  Italy,  and  hoped  one  day 
to  unite  the  two  crowns  of  Naples  and  of  St.  Stephen,  if  not 
on  his  own  head,  yet  on  that  of  one  of  his  children.  He 
believed  this  hope  sure  of  realization  when  he  was  able  to 
conclude  the  marriage  of  his  son  Andrew  with  Joan,  daughter 
of  the  duke  of  Calabria,  who  became  afterwards  the  notorious 
Joan  of  Naples. 

Charles  kept  up  the  most  cordial  relations  with  Venice. 
His  first  object  was  to  secure  friends  in  Italy,  and  with  this 
end  in  view  he  concluded  a  treaty  of  commerce  with  the  Most 
Serene  Republic,  securing  to  them  their  towns  on  the  Adriatic. 
Towards  the  north,  Poland  was  the  special  object  of  his 
ambition,   and  here  he  was  able  to  enter  into  close  alliance 


220  I/IS  TORY  OF  AUSTRO-IWNGARY. 

with  A\'laclislaw  Lokictek,  whose  daughter  he  married  in  1320. 
He  was  not  without  hope  that  Poland  might  some  day  be 
united  to  Hungary,  and  persuaded  king  Kasimir  III.  to  recog- 
nize Louis  of  Anjou,  his  son,  as  his  heir  (1338).  Hungary, 
united  on  one  side  to  Poland,  and  on  the  other  to  Italy,  might 
have  become  one  of  the  most  powerful  states  of  Europe. 

loiiis  the  Gnat  (1342-13S2) — The  Hungarians  in  Italy — 
Wars  with  Venice  and  Naples. 

It  seemed  as  if  Louis  the  Great,  the  son  of  Charles  Robert, 
was  to  realize  the  ambitious  dreams  of  his  father.  Shortly 
after  his  accession,  he  received  the  news  of  the  murder  of  his 
brother,  who  had  been  assassinated  at  the  instigation  of  his 
wife,  Joan  of  Naples.  This  seemed  to  furnish  a  good  excuse 
for  interfering  in  the  affairs  of  Ital)-,  especially  as  the  Hun- 
garian nation  shared  in  the  indignation  of  the  sovereign.  The 
diet  levied  a  large  army,  and  the  republic  of  Venice  consented 
to  the  free  passage  of  the  Magyar  troops  through  its  territor)-. 
Louis  entered  Italy,  and  Florence  complimented  the  first  king 
of  Hungary  who  had  set  foot  on  the  soil  of  the  peninsula. 
He  reached  without  difficulty  the  town  of  Aversa,  where  his 
brother  had  been  assassinated,  and  there  he  seized  and  put  to 
death  Charles  of  Durazzo,  who  was  accused  of  having  been 
an  accomplice  in  the  murder  of  prince  Andrew,  and  then 
pushing  on  to  Naples  he  took  possession  of  the  reins  of 
government.  But  it  was  only  for  a  brief  period.  He  was 
forced  to  return  to  Hungary  after  Joan  had  been  declared 
innocent  by  the  cardinals  as  having  acted  under  the  influence 
of  sorcery. 

Louis's  expedition  was  quite  useless  as  regarded  his  am- 
bitious projects,  but  it  had  one  result  of  importance.  It 
taught  the  Hungarians  to  know  the  west ;  it  revealed  to  them 
a  world  of  refinement  and  elegance  hitherto  quite  unknown  on 
the  vast  Hungarian  plain,  and  the  effects  of  this  temporary 
contact  with  the  country  on  which  the  Renaissance  was  then 


LOUIS   THE    GREAT.  22  1 

dawning,  can  in  future  be  seen  in  the  manners,  literature,  and 
arts  of  the  Magyars. 

Though  Louis  had  been  obliged  to  abandon  Italy,  he  had 
iit  least  been  able  to  establish  the  sovereignty  of  Hungary 
firmly  on  the  Adriatic.  He  had  married  a  Slav  princess, 
Elizabeth  Kotzmanovic,  sister  of  the  ban  of  Bosnia,  the  pro- 
vince over  which  the  kings  of  Hungary  claimed  a  sovereignty 
which  they  could  not  exercise.  In  consequence  of  this  connec- 
tion with  Bosnia,  the  pope  called  Louis's  attention  to  the  spread 
of  the  Patarine^  heresy  in  eastern  Europe,  more  especially 
among  the  southern  Slavs.  This  led  him  to  undertake  an 
expedition  against  the  Slavs  of  Dalmatia,  and  in  1345  he 
attempted  to  get  possession  of  Jadera  (Zara).  The  Venetians, 
however,  interfered,  and  he  was  unsuccessful.  Some  years 
afterwards,  when  he  had  raised  a  considerable  arm}-,  under 
pretence  of  fighting  the  heretical  Servians,  he  suddenly  invaded 
the  north  of  Ital}^,  and  penetrated  as  far  as  Padua.  The  re- 
public had  no  means  of  maintaining  a  struggle  on  land,  and 
was  forced  to  conclude  a  peace  by  which  Louis  gained 
possession  of  the  whole  of  Dalmatia  (1358).  This  gave 
Hungary  access  to  the  Adriatic,  and  an  opportunity  of  de- 
veloping into  a  maritime  power.  When  he  had  conquered 
Dalmatia,  Louis  turned  his  arms  against  the  heretics,  attacking 
Urosh,  emperor  of  Servia,  and  obliging  him  to  restore  certain 
lands  which  his  father  had  conquered  in  Hungary.  In  the 
banat  of  Bosnia,  the  terrified  Paterines  fled  from  him  into  the 
mountains,  while  in  the  comitat  of  INIarmaros  the  dread  of  this 
champion  of  the  Romish  Church  drove  the  Wallachian  adherents 
of  the  Eastern  Church  to  take  refuge  in  Moldavia.  Louis  had 
become  a  favourite  with  the  papacy,  and  furnished  it  with  help 
against  its  enemies. 

Meanwhile  the  Turks  had  settled  in  the  Balkan  peninsula, 

*  Patarini,  a  name  which,  from  having  belonged  to  the  opponents  of 
clerical  marriage  in  Milan  in  the  preceding  centuries,  was  now  transferred 
to  parties  which  disparaged  all  marriage  ;  or  perhaps  had  come  to  be  used 
in  forgetfuhiess  jf  its  origin,  as  a  convenient  designation  for  sectaries. — 
T.  C.  Rol)erlson,  History  of  the  Christian  Church. 


222  HISTORY  OF  AUSTKO-HU.\GARY. 

and  were  advancing  towards  Hungary.  The  sultan  Murad  had 
already  taken  Adrianople  (1375),  and  was  watching  Byzantium. 
According  to  documents,  which  are,  however,  somewhat  obscure, 
the  first  battle  between  the  Magyars  and  the  Osmanlis  took 
place  in  the  year  1366,  on  the  Danube,  close  to  the  Iron  Gates. 
The  Greek  emperor,  John  Palceologus,  came  to  the  court  of 
Louis  to  implore  his  help,  promising,  if  it  were  granted,  to 
become  a  convert  to  the  Romish  faith.  But  the  then  Pope 
cared  too  much  for  questions  of  dogma,  and  too  little  for  the 
dangers  which  threatened  Christendom,  and  he  persuaded 
the  king  of  Hungary  to  put  no  faith  in  the  emperor's  promises ; 
Louis  therefore  turned  his  attention  from  the  affairs  of  the 
Greek  empire  towards  Poland,  whose  crown  had  so  long  been 
the  object  of  his  ambition. 

As  we  have  already  seen,  he  was  the  chosen  heir  of  king 
Kasimir.  He  had  lost  no  opportunity  of  ingratiating  himself 
with  the  Poles,  lending  them  his  aid  against  the  Lithuanians, 
who  were  still  pagans,  and  against  the  Tartars.  He  had 
crossed  the  Carpathians  in  1354,  with  a  considerable  army,  to 
help  the  Poles  to  drive  back  both  these  enemies,  who  had 
invaded  Volhynia  and  Podolia.  By  these  services  lie  had 
earned  their  gratitude,  and  in  1370  he  was  able  to  get  himself 
proclaimed  king  both  in  Cracow  and  in  the  sacred  city  of 
Gniezno,  near  the  relics  of  St.  Adalbert.  But  his  reign  in 
Poland  was  not  fortunate.  His  mother,  to  whom  he  had 
entrusted  the  government,  was  unable  to  manage  this  restless 
and  lawless  nation,  and  revolts  soon  broke  out.  In  such  a 
state  of  things,  Louis  of  Anjou  could  hardly  hope  to  secure 
both  the  crown  of  Poland  and  that  of  Hungary  for  his 
successor.  He  had  no  son.  After  hesitating  for  a  long  time,. 
he  decided  to  make  Sigismund,  the  young  prince  of  Luxemljurg, 
son  of  Charles  IV.  (the  future  king  of  Bohemia  and  emperor 
of  (iermany),  a  member  of  his  family,  and  married  him  to 
Mary,  his  eldest  daughter.  Sigismund  was  sent  while  he  was 
still  very  young  to  the  court  of  Hungar)^,  there  to  study  the 
language   and   laws   of    the   country.     Louis    had    two   other 


COXDITION  OF  HUXGARY  UNDER  LOUIS.         223 

daughters,  Hcdwig,  who  afterwards  became  queen  of  Poland, 
and  Catherine,  whom  he  hoped  to  marry  to  a  I''rench  prnice. 
Embassies  had  already  been  exchanged  with  this  end  in  view 
between  Charles  V.  of  France  and  Louis  of  Hungary,  when 
the  death  of  the  young  princess  put  an  end  to  the  project. 
The  last  years  of  the  reign  of  Louis  were  devoted  to  a  war 
against  Venice,  which  ended  in  the  defeat  of  Venice,  and 
secured  for  Hungary  the  peaceable  possession  of  the  Adriatic 
shore  in  the  future. 

With  the  death  of  Louis  the  Great  (13S2)  the  house  of 
Anjou,  which  had  only  given  two  kings  to  the  INLigyars,  became 
extinct. 

State  of  Hungary  under  tJie  House  of  Anjou. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  kings  of  the  house  of  Anjou 
would  bring  into  Hungary  the  influence  of  western  habits. 
Even  before  their  time  the  institutions  of  the  country  had 
already  made  some  approach  to  the  feudal  type,  but  LIungary 
never  adopted  feudalism  as  a  whole.  "  Two  things  prevented 
this,"  says  M.  Sayous,  "  first,  the  complete  power  of  the  kings 
over  the  whole  land,  a  fundamental  law  which  made  the  forma- 
tion of  large  fiefs  quite  impossible  ;  and  next,  the  interest  taken 
in  politics  by  the  numerous  petite  noblesse,  a  class  which  was 
much  more  numerous  in  Hungary  than  in  any  other  country. 
In  a  word,  the  king  was  too  powerful  and  the  people  who  had 
political  influence  too  careful  of  their  rights,  for  Hungary,  not- 
withstanding its  knightly  and  aristocratic  tendencies,  ever  to 
become  a  completely  feudal  state." 

The  Angevin  princes  increased  the   luxury  of  the  court. 

They  gathered  around  them  a  hierarchy  of  great  lords,  and 

richly  endowed  some  noble  f:imiHes,  who   became  absolutely 

devoted  to  them.     The  court  was  sometimes  held  at  Buda  and 

sometimes  at  the  castle   of  Visegrad,  whose  Slav  name  had 

survived  the  occupation  of  the  Magyars,  and  whose  splendour 

inspired  the  following  lines  of  the  poet — 

"  Inspice  natales  Visegradi  et  funera  :  dices 
Destruxisse  homines,  sed  poluisse  Deos." 


224  JIISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-llUNGARY. 

'I'ournaments  were  held  there  and  the  science  of  heraldry 
was  encouraged.  The  army  gathered  in  banderia  round  the 
lords,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  and  those  who  brought  a  certain 
number  of  soldiers  had  the  right  of  leading  them  to  battle 
under  their  own  standards.  -Vn  hereditary  nobility  was  formed 
by  the  law  of  "atavicity  ;"  a  law  which  deprived  noble  families 
of  the  right  to  sell  their  estates ;  they  were  to  descend  to  the 
natural  heirs  as  long  as  there  were  any,  and  in  default  to  lapse 
to  the  king.  Charles  Robert  and  Louis  convoked  the  general 
diets  but  seldom ;  but  to  make  up  for  this  they  interfered  very 
little  with  the  assemblies  of  the  comitats. 

The  burgher  class  in  the  chief  towns  was  recruited  prin- 
cipally from  foreigners.  A  large  number  of  Italians  had  been 
attracted  to  Hungary  as  the  result  of  the  connection  with 
Naples,  and  Germans  always  abounded  in  Transylvania. 
Trade  with  Germany,  Italy,  and  even  the  east,  increased  the 
intercourse  with  these  countries.  Some  towns,  called  free 
cities,  enjoyed  considerable  privileges  in  return  for  yearly  pay- 
ments made  to  the  king.  Louis  the  Great,  who  had  taken 
upon  himself  the  part  of  champion  of  Christianity,  persecuted 
the  Jews,  many  of  whom  emigrated  to  Austria  and  Poland  ; 
those  who  remained  formed  a  separate  people  in  the  country 
(Universitas  Judseorum),  dependent  solely  on  the  king  and 
wearing  a  peculiar  dress.  The  Church  was  richly  endowed, 
a  circumstance  which  did  not  increase  the  morality  of  the 
clergy.  Learning  increased ;  Louis  the  Great,  with  the  con- 
sent of  pope  Urban  V.,  had  founded  a  university  in  the  town 
of  Pecs  (Fiinfkirchen),  in  which  all  the  sciences  except  the- 
ology were  taught ;  the  literary  productions  of  the  time  are, 
however,  of  little  value.  The  works  of  the  Dalmatian  historians 
owed  their  existence  to  the  special  culture  which  their  country 
enjoyed  from  its  intercourse  with  the  west,  and  the  literary 
life  of  Slavo-Italian  Dalmatia  was  very  different  from  that  of 
Hungary  properly  so  called,  whose  literature  contains  little  of 
interest.  But  very  little  remains  of  it ;  we  know  that  at  one 
time  there  existed  a  whole  cycle  of  poems  celebrating  the 


SIGISMUND   OF  LUXEMBURG.  22  5 

national  heroes  and  among  them  Louis  the  Great,  but  not  a 
single  line  has  come  down  to  us. 

Sigisi/iiind  of  Lttxcinbiirg  (1382-1437). 

The  destined  heir  to  the  crown  of  Hungary  was,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  Prince  Sigismund  of  Luxemburg,  but  the 
diet  was  not  willing  to  accept  a  foreigner  as  king,  and,  as 
Hungary  had  no  Salic  law,  the  Princess  ]\Lary  was  crowned  in 
Szekes  Fejervar.  Coronata  fnit  in  regein,  says  the  chronicler 
Lucius,  and  this  expression  of  the  fourteenth  century  explains 
to  us  the  famous  moriamicr  pro  rege  nostra  of  the  eighteenth. 
With  the  help  of  the  queen-dowager  Elizabeth,  the  young 
princess  ruled  the  kingdom. 

The  Poles  on  their  side  refused  to  accept  Sigismund  as 
their  king  unless  he  would  undertake  to  reside  in  Poland,  and 
they  chose  the  princess  Hedwig  to  reign  over  them.  She 
soon  afterwards  married  Jagiello,  duke  of  Lithuania,  and  con- 
verted him  to  Christianity.  This  alliance  of  a  princess  of  the 
royal  family  of  France  with  a  pagan  of  the  north  prepared  the 
way  for  the  union  of  Lithuania  and  Poland. 

It  was  some  time  before  the  claims  of  Sigismund  to  Hun- 
gary were  recognized.  The  queen-dowager  wished  Charles  of 
Orleans,  one  of  the  French  princes,  to  dispute  the  throne 
with  him  ;  the  king  of  Naples,  Charles  of  Durazzo,  also  forced 
his  way  into  the  kingdom  and  had  himself  crowned,  but  he 
perished  soon  afterwards  in  a  popular  rising.  Tired  at  last  of 
the  state  of  uncertainty,  the  diet  had  Sigismund  proclaimed 
king,  and  he,  happy  in  the  possession  of  Hungary,  abandoned 
all  claim  to  the  crown  of  Poland.  He  gave  up  also  those 
shadowy  claims  of  Hungary  to  Galicia  and  Lodomeria,  which 
were  revived  years  afterwards  by  Maria  Theresa. 

The  beginning  of  Sigismund's  reign  was  troubled  by  rcbel- 
iions  in  Hungary  and  Croatia,  which  were  put  down  with 
severity.  More  serious  dangers  threatened  the  kingdom  from 
the  Turks.  The  Servians  had  succumbed  to  them ;  the 
princes  of  Wallachia  had  recognized  their  suzerainty ;  Bosnia 


226  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

was  invaded ;  Bulgaria  had  fallen  into  their  hands.  Sigis- 
mund  and  the  diet  determined  at  once  to  put  a  stop  to  their 
further  progress.  But  Hungary  could  do  little  alone  ;  so  Sigis- 
mund  sought  the  alliance  of  the  Greek  emperor  Manuel  IL, 
and  sent  to  ask  for  help  from  Germany,  France,  and  Burgundy. 
The  war  thus  begun  was  ended  by  the  defeat  of  Nikopolis 
(1396),  in  which  both  French  and  Hungarians  were  van- 
quished. Sigismund  escaped  with  great  difficulty  to  his  ter- 
ritory on  the  Adriatic  with  the  help  of  the  Venetian  fleet,  and 
the  small  republic  of  Dubrovnik  (Ragusa),  Avhich  was  then 
free  and  prosperous,  lent  the  fugitive  king  money  to  enable 
him  to  return  to  his  kingdom.  The  Turks  remained  masters 
of  the  Lower  Danube. 

The  name  of  Sigismund  is  celebrated  ratlier  as  emperor 
and  king  of  Bohemia  than  as  king  of  Hungary  ;  but  one  or 
two  events  occurred  in  his  reign  which  Avere  of  importance  to 
the  Magyars.  The  two  diets  of  Temesvar  and  Buda,  held 
in  1397  and  1405,  laid  the  foundations  on  which  the  repre- 
sentative government  of  Hungary  has  ever  since  been  based. 
From  this  time  each  comitat  sent  four  representatives  to  the 
lower  chamber,  or  Chamber  of  Orders  {ordiiiuiii\  and  the 
royal  cities  were  also  represented ;  while  the  upper  chamber 
was  composed  of  the  hereditary  legislators  and  prelates.  The 
assemblies  of  the  comitats  thus  gained  real  political  influence 
and  early  became  accustomed  to  entrust  to  their  delegates 
what  might  be  called  "  un  mandat  imperatif ;  "  the  kind  of 
commission  which  is  the  ideal  of  some  modern  democracies, 
seemed  quite  natural  to  the  small  land-owners  of  Flungary.  It 
Avas  at  this  time  also  that  the  light  troops  of  hussars,  which  were 
especially  destined  for  War  against  the  Turks,  were  first  formed. 
Sigismund  cannot  be  looked  upon  as  a  wise  ruler.  He 
was  melancholy,  capricious,  cruel,  and  a  religious  persecutor  ;; 
he  was  never  popular  among  his  Hungarian  subjects.  Always 
needy,  he  was  constantly  mortgaging  the  crown  lands.  He 
had  the  same  faults  as  his  brother  Vacslav  IV.  of  Bohemia, 
and  was  destined  to  have  the  same  misfortunes.     In  1401,  a 


LOSS  OF  D ALMA  77 A.  22/ 

plot  was  formed  with  the  help  of  the  prhnate  of  the  kingdom 
and  the  palatine,  and  Sigismund  was  suddenly  taken  prisoner 
in  his  palace  and  shut  up  in  the  castle  of  Vysegrad  ;  he  was 
soon,  however,  restored  to  liberty  because  no  one  could  be 
found  to  take  his  ])lace  on  the  throne.  \Yq  have  already  seen 
how  he  treated  Vacslav,  whom  he  helped  the  Austrian  princes 
to  keep  as  a  prisoner  in  Vienna  (1404).  He  concluded  a 
treaty  of  succession  with  his  brother-in-law  Albert  of  Austria, 
which  prepared  the  way  for  the  future  rule  of  that  house  over 
Hungary.  The  diet  accepted  this  treaty,  but  Sigismund 
became  every  day  more  unpopular,  and  we  find  Ladislas  of 
Naples  landing  at  Jadara  (Zara),  getting  himself  crowned  by 
the  archbishop  of  Esztergom  (Gran),  and  then  pushing  his 
way  on  to  Raab  (Gyor).  He  was,  however,  driven  back  by 
Sigismund.  A  short  time  after,  Sigismund  and  pope  Gregory 
XII.  planned  a  new  crusade  against  the  Turks,  and  founded 
the  order  of  the  Dragon,  whose  members  were  to  fight  against 
infidels  and  heretics. 

In  141 1,  Sigismund  was  chosen  emperor.  It  was  the  first 
time  this  dangerous  honour  had  been  conferred  on  a  king  of 
Hungary,  and  it  proved  a  great  misfortune  to  the  country,  as 
from  this  time  forward  it  was  looked  upon  as  an  appendage  of 
Germany.  Sigismund  was  none  the  better  king  for  being 
emperor.  The  year  following  his  election  he  mortgaged  to 
Poland  a  portion  of  the  district  of  Szepes  (Zips)  on  the 
Carpathian  frontier;  and  when,  a  little  later,  owing  to  his 
position  as  emperor,  he  was  dragged  into  a  war  with  Venice, 
Hungary  paid  the  penalty  of  his  defeat  by  the  loss  of  tlie 
Dalmatian  coast  (1419).  In  the  following  year,  Kotor  (Cattaro) 
gave  itself  up  to  Venice,  and  remained  in  her  possession  down 
to  1797.  Thus  the  whole  of  the  Dalmatian  coast,  except  the 
free  republic  of  Ragusa,  fell  into  the  power  of  \'enice ;  the 
interior  of  the  country,  however,  remained  dependent  on 
Croatia,  and  was  governed  by  the  ban  of  that  country.  To 
add  to  his  misfortunes,  Sigismund  became  king  of  Bohemia. 
The  union  of  the  three  crowns  proved  as  fatal  to  Hungary  as 


228  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

to  Bohemia,  because  the  Magyars  no\v  found  themselves 
obh'ged  to  employ  their  energies  in  a  useless  struggle  against 
the  Hussites,  whose  teaching,  indeed,  was  making  considerable 
progress  amongst  themselves,  instead  of  turning  all  their 
strength  against  the  common  enemy,  the  Turks.  The  princes 
of  the  two  houses  of  Arpad  and  Anjou  had  never,  like  Sigis- 
mund,  worn  the  imperial  crown,  but  at  least  they  had  known 
how  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  their  kingdom. 

Had  Sigismund  cared  less  for  these  religious  wars,  and 
more  for  the  real  interests  of  Christianity,  he  might  have  found 
southwards  of  his  dominions  some  compensation  for  his  losses 
elsewhere.  Servia  had  been  half  conquered  by  the  Turks,  but 
had  been  able  to  keep  its  native  princes,  who,  under  the  name 
of  despots,  had  managed  to  maintain  a  doubtful  kind  of 
independence,  by  oscillating  between  their  neighbours,  Turkey 
and  Hungary.  About  this  time,  Stephen  Lazarevic,  one  of  the 
Servian  despots,  acknowledged  himself  the  vassal  of  the  king 
of  Hungary,  and  did  homage  to  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen,  not 
only  for  the  future,  but  even  for  the  past,  by  this  act  acknow- 
ledging that  Servia  had  always  been  subject  to  Hungar}'. 
This  act  falsified  history — Servia  had  long  been  an  indepen- 
dent kingdom — but  otherwise  it  is  of  little  practical  interest, 
as  Servia  so  soon  afterwards  fell  entirely  into  the  hands  of  the 
Mussulmans.  Stephen  Lazarevic,  however,  died  childless, 
and,  according  to  the  terms  of  the  act  of  homage,  Belgrade, 
Macva,  Golubac,  and  some  other  towns^  became  the  property 
of  Hungary.  In  consequence  of  a  contract  entered  into  by 
Sigismund  with  George  Brankovic,  the  new  despot,  these  towns 
were  only  given  up  in  exchange  for  others,  Servia  obtaining 
Slankamen,  Munkacs,  Tokaj,  Debreczen,  Vilagos,  afterwards 
so  celebrated,  and  some  others.  At  the  time  of  this  exchange, 
a  large  number  of  Servian  families  migrated  into  Hungary, 
and  brought  into  the  country  a  military  clement,  which  proved 
of  considerable  value  in  the  wars  against  the  Turks.  Bran- 
kovic turned  out  a  dangerous  vassal ;  he  was  always  ready  to 
come  to  terms  with  the  sultan,  to  whom  he  married  his  sister, 


OKGAMZATION  OF  IIUXGARIAX  ARMY.  229 

and  his  policy  towards  both  his  neighbours  was  more  worthy 
of  a  doge  of  Venice  than  of  a  Servian  hero. 

Hungary,  threatened  on  one  side  by  the  Turks,  on  the 
other  was  ravaged  by  the  Hussites.  In  1435,  ^^  ^^^^^  o^ 
Poszony  (Presburg)  took  measures  for  the  national  defence, 
and  completed  the  organization  of  the  army.  Everyone  who 
did  not  already  serve  in  tlie  handeria  of  the  prelates  and  great 
lords  was  in  future  to  serve  in  the  bandcria  of  the  comitats,  and 
the  country  was  divided  into  seven  camps,  a  measure  which 
very  much  facilitated  the  management  of  military  affairs.  But, 
notwithstanding  these  efforts,  Hungary  was  the  scene  of  the 
greatest  disorders.  Peasant  revolts  broke  out  in  Transylvania  ; 
and  the  Hussite  doctrines  spread  among  this  people,  who  had 
been  so  often  led  by  their  sovereigns  to  fight  against  tliem. 
In  1437,  Sigismund  ended  his  long  reign  without  having 
remedied  one  of  the  many  evils  of  which  he  had  been  either 
the  author  or  the  impotent  spectator. 

Albert  of  Austria —  Wladyshnv  Jagiello  (143 8- 1444). 

Taught  by  experience,  the  diet  imposed  much  more  severe 
restrictions  on  the  new  king  than  those  to  which  Sigismund 
had  submitted.  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  the  late  king,  was 
declared  his  heir,  and  her  husband,  Albert  of  Austria,  was 
associated  with  her  on  the  throne.  At  last  the  house  of 
Austria  had  obtained  the  prize  whicli  had  so  long  been  the 
object  of  its  desires ;  but  Hungary  insisted  on  the  following 
conditions  : — The  new  king  was  always  to  reside  in  the  country ; 
he  was  to  consult  the  diet  as  to  the  marriage  of  his  daughters  ; 
Itc  was  neither  to  give  nor  to  sell  the  crown  lands,  nor  to 
nominate  the  palatine,  without  the  consent  of  the  assembly. 
Neither  the  monarch  nor  his  subjects,  however,  had  time  to  put 
these  wise  agreements  into  practice,  as  Albert  died  in  1439. 
He  left  his  wife  pregnant.  The  Turks,  who  had  captured 
Smederevo  (Semendria),  were  now  on  the  very  threshold  of  the 
kingdom,  and  a  king  was  imperatively  needed.  The  child, 
Madislav  the  Posthumous,  who  was  born  shortly  after  Albert's 


230  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

dealli,  was  not  the  king  needed  by  a  nation  in  such  straits,  and 
the  majority  of  the  people  decided  to  elect  Wladyslaw 
Jagiello,  king  of  Poland,  as  their  ruler.  Among  the  partisans 
of  the  new  monarch,  John  Corvinus  Hunyady  stood  in  the 
foremost  rank.  He  belonged  to  a  noble  family  in  Transyl- 
vania, and  had  already  distinguished  himself  by  his  bravery 
against  the  Turks.  He  now  took  up  arms  against  the  Austrian 
party  in  support  of  the  king  whom  his  patriotism  had  chosen, 
and  endeavoured  to  unite  the  whole  nation  against  the  infidels. 
The  Sultan  Murad  had  laid  siege  to  Belgrade,  which  at 
this  time  belonged  to  Hungary ;  but  Hunyady  forced  him  to 
retire.  The  Turks  next  marched  into  Transylvania ;  Hunyady 
got  before  them,  and  gave  them  a  crushing  defeat  near  Hcr- 
mannstadt  at  St.  Emmerich  (Szent-Imre),  leaving  twenty 
thousand  dead  on  the  field  of  battle,  Brankovic,  the  Servian 
despot,  rendered  Hunyady  assistance  in  this  expedition,  which 
the  conqueror  repaid  by  sending  to  him, as  a  bloody  trophy, 
the  head  of  Mesid  Bey,  the  Turkish  general.  Exasperated  by 
this  defeat,  Murad  next  sent  general  Schehabeddin  against 
Hungary.  Hunyady  attacked  him  near  the  Iron  Gates  of  the 
Danube  with  a  far  inferior  force,  and  the  Hungarian  cavalry 
put  the  janissaries  to  flight  and  nobly  avenged  Nikopolis. 
Murad,  terrified,  begged  for  peace.  Hungary  refused  to  grant 
it,  for  it  seemed  as  if  the  moment  had  come  when  the  Turks 
could  be  driven  once  for  all  from  her  frontiers.  In  the  month 
of  July,  1443,  king  Wladyslaw  and  John  Hunyady  crossed  the 
Danube  close  to  Smederevo  (Semendria),  and  marched  up  the 
valley  of  the  Morava.  Again  defeated  at  Nish,  the  Turks 
were  obliged  to  fall  back  and  leave  Sophia  in  the  hands  of  the 
Magyars.  The  latter  then  crossed  a  defile  of  the  Balkans  in 
spite  of  the  formidable  defences  of  the  Turks,  and  penetrated 
into  the  valley  of  the  Maritsa,  where  again  the  Mussulmans 
were  severely  beaten.  The  road  to  Constantinople  lay  open 
to  the  Magyars ;  but  winter  came  upon  them  in  these  barren 
regions,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  delirium  of  triumph  the  king 
was  oblisied  to  order  a  retreat. 


DEFEAT  OF    VARNA.  23  I 

Once  more  ]\Iurad  begged  for  peace,  and  the  diet  of 
Szeged  offered  the  following  conditions  to  him  : — A  truce  to  be 
concluded  for  ten  years  ;  Wallachia  to  pass  again  under  the 
suzerainty  of  Hungary  ;  Servia  and  Herzegovina  to  be  restored 
.to  the  despot  Brankovic  ;  the  Turkish  prisoners  to  purchase 
their  freedom  by  heavy  ransoms.  This  treaty  was  solemnly 
sworn  to  on  the  Gospel  and  on  the  Koran. 

But  many  Christians  thought  that  it  was  a  great  mistake 
thus  to  lose  the  easy  advantages  of  the  success  gained  by  the 
Hungarians,  and  cardinal  Julius]  Cesarini  proved  to  the  diet 
•that  an  oath  taken  to  infidels  was  not  binding,  and  that  he, 
.as  the  representative  of  the  Holy  See,  had  the  power  to  annul 
it.  Notwithstanding  the  treaty,  the  king  and  Hunyady  there- 
upon decided  to  renew  the  war,  and  marched  towards  Bulgaria 
and  the  Black  Sea.  Murad  was  at  this  time  in  Asia  Minor ; 
but  the  Genoese,  worthy  rivals  of  the  Venetians,  carried  his 
troops  to  Europe  in  their  fleet  for  the  sum  of  70,000  ducats, 
and  on  the  loth  of  November,  1444,  the  Christian  and  IMussul- 
man  armies  found  themselves  face  to  face  at  Varna,  near  the 
Balkan  j\Iountains.  In  order  to  recall  to  the  Christians  their 
broken  faith  and  to  disturb  their  consciences,  Murad  had  a 
•copy  of  the  treaty  and  of  the  Gospel  they  had  dishonoured 
carried  on  a  lance  in  front  of  his  troops. 

The  beginning  of  this  memorable  battle  was  fiivourable  to 
the  Hungarians.  Their  cavalry  charged  with  unheard-of 
courage ;  but  soon  king  Wladyslaw,  carried  away  by  his  ardour, 
rushed  into  the  midst  of  the  fray,  and  his  head,  placed  at  the 
end  of  a  lance,  announced  their  defeat  to  the  Magyars.  The 
action  ended  in  a  hopeless  flight,  and  of  his  glorious  army  Hun- 
yady only  brought  back  to  Hungary  some  miserable  remains. 

A  wit  of  the  time  made  the  often-quoted  epitaph  on 
^Vladyslaw — 

"  Romani  Cannas,  ego  Varnam  clade  notavi  ; 
Discite  mortales  non  temerare  fidem," 

The  defeat  at  Varna  opened  the  gates  of  Constantinoi^le  to 
.the  Turks. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

JOHN    HUNYADY — MATHIAS    CORVINUS THE   JAGELLONS 

(1444—1526). 

Ladislas  the  Posthumous — -John  Hunyady  Governor  of  the 
Kingdom. 

Ladislas  the  Posthumous  had  been  sent  to  the  court  of  his 
uncle,  Frederick  of  Austria,  to  be  educated.  He  was  at  this  time 
only  five  years  old,  and  the  diet,  \vhich  now  met  at  Buda,  while 
proclaiming  him  king,  decided  that  during  his  minority  the 
government  should  be  carried  on  by  representatives  of  the 
aristocracy,  both  lay  and  ecclesiastical.  In  consequence  of 
this  decision,  there  was  for  a  time  something  like  a  republic, 
and  happy  would  it  have  been  for  Hungary  if  the  experience 
of  this  period  had  led  her  always  to  do  without  a  king.  It  was 
also  decided  that  Ladislas  should  be  given  up  to  the  nobles,  in 
order  that  he  should  be  brought  up  in  Hungary  ;  but  Frederick 
refused  to  give  up  his  ward,  whereupon  the  diet  met  again  oa 
the  plain  of  Rakos,^  and  proclaimed  Johu  Hunyady  governor 
during  his  absence.  Hunyady  was  to  be  a  kind  of  lieutenant- 
general,  with  much  the  same  authority  as  George  of  Podiebrad 
was  about  to  exercise  as  grand  hetman  of  Bohemia.  Hunyady's 
first  intention  was  to  defend  his  country  against  the  house  of 
Austria ;  but  the  pope,  who  understood  the  importance  of 
Hungary  in  the  struggle  against  the  Ottoman  power,  brought 

'  The  diets  were  often  held  on  this  plain.      The  Poles  used  to  call  a 
riotous  meeting  of  their  nobles  a  Rokosz. 


DEFEAT  OF  KOSOVO.  233- 

about  a  reconciliation  between  the  two  countries,  and  after 
this  the  Magyar  hero  was  able  to  assemble  an  army  of  twenty- 
four  thousand  men  against  the  common  enemy  of  Christendom, 
and  to  cross  the  Danube,  while  Scanderbeg   made  a  useful 
diversion  in  Albania.     Unfortunately,  George  Brankovic  had 
already  begun  to  play  that  double  game  which  has  disgraced 
his    memory,    and     consequently    refused    his    aid     to    the 
Hungarians.      He  had  hoped  to  have  himself  been  chosen^ 
Giibej-nator  regni,  but  Hunyady  had  been  preferred  before  him,- 
and  jealousy  of  his  rival  and  fear  of  the  Turks,  who  seemed 
to  him  likely  to  prove  the  stronger,   led  him  once  more  to 
desert  the  Magyars,     Hunyady,  however,  crossed  the  Serviarr 
territory  and  reached  the  fatal  plain  of  Kosovo  (1448).     There 
Murad  awaited  him  behind  formidable  intrenchments,  and  the 
disaster  of  Varna   was   repeated.      To   crown    his   treachery, 
Brankovic  offered  after  the  battle  to  take  Hunyady  prisoner 
and  deliver  him  up  to  the  sultan,  but  the  knightly  IMussulman 
refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  so  infamous  an  action. 
This   second    defeat   in  no   wise    diminished    the   popularity 
of  Hunyady  or  the  confidence  felt  in  him,  but  the  house  of 
Austria  dreaded  so  watchful   a    guardian  of  the  freedom    of 
Hungary,    and  excited  opposition  in  various  quarters  against 
him.     They  supported  the  claims  of  the  Chekh  noble,  Jiskra 
of  Brandyse,  grand   hetman   of  the   king   of  Bohemia,   who 
settled  to  the  north  of  Hungary   on  the  slopes  of  the  Car- 
pathians, occupied  the  land  in  the  name  of  his  king,  and  refused 
to   recognize    the   authority  of  John    Hunyady.       The   latter 
attacked  him,  but  without  success.     This  Jiskra  is  hated  by 
the  Magyar  race  as  the  enemy  of  their  country,  and  celebrated 
by  the  Chekhs  as  a  zealous  servant  of  his  king  and  a  fervent 
upholder  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Hussites. 

Meanwhile  the  emperor  continued  to  refuse  to  give  up  the 
young  king,  and  the  Magyars  to  demand  his  return,  sending 
their  envoys  even  as  far  as  Italy,  when  he  visited  that  country, 
and  endeavouring  to  carry  him  off  by  surprise.  They  have 
always  had  a  superstitious  respect  for  the  royal  crown  and  the 


234  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

person  of  their  king,  and  both  were  now  in  the  possession  of 
Austria,  Frederick  having  carried  away  the  sacred  crown,  the 
crown  of  St.  Stephen,  when  he  bore  off  his  young  ward  to  the 
Austrian  court.  At  last,  however,  the  emperor  yielded  to 
the  entreaties  of  the  nation,  and  Ladislas  was  allowed  to  return 
to  his  native  country  (1453).  13 ut  it  was  only  for  a  time.  He 
received  the  reins  of  government  from  the  hands  of  Hunyady, 
rewarding  the  patriot  with  his  thanks  and  the  title  of  count  of 
Bistrice,  assisted  at  the  deliberations  of  the  diet  at  Poszony,  and 
then  once  more  returned  to  Vienna. 

At  this  time  the  position  of  affairs  in  Turkey  demanded 
the  full  attention  of  John  Hunyady.  Constantinople  had 
fallen;  Brankovic  was  imploring  the  help  of  Hungary.  A 
meeting  of  the  diet  was  summoned  to  Buda.  It  voted  large 
subsidies  and  decided  on  a  general  insurrection  ^  in  case  the 
country  should  be  invaded ;  and  then  Hunyady  marched  into 
Servia,  up  the  valley  of  the  Morava,  and  coming  up  with  the 
Turks  near  Krushevats,  close  to  the  spot  by  which  they  had 
formerly  invaded  Servia,  defeated  them,  and  drove  them  back, 
pushing  his  way  as  far  as  Sophia.  Had  he  had  the  whole  of 
Europe  as  his  allies  he  might  then  have  driven  the  Osmanlis 
from  Constantinople;  but,  instead,  Hungary  was  entirely  without 
allies,  and  John  Hunyady  himself  had  two  jealous  rivals,  the 
palatine  Gara  and  the  count  of  Cilly,  who  were  always  trying 
to  prejudice  the  mind  of  the  young  king  against  him.  He 
was  obliged  to  retrace  his  steps  ;  but  at  least  he  determined  to 
save  Belgrade.  This  fortified  town,  from  its  wonderful  posi- 
tion, is  the  key  both  to  the  Danube  and  the  Save,  and  is 
called  by  the  Turks,  with  some  show  of  reason,  the  Town  of  the 
Holy  A\'ar.  The  brothcr-in4aw  of  Hunyady  commanded  it, 
and  the  sultan  Mahomet  U.  had  brought  against  it  the  most 
formidable  artillery  that  had  ever  been  seen.  In  the  uneijual 
struggle,  Hunyady  had  no  ally  except  the  monk  Capistrano, 

'  Insurrection,  the  name  applied  by  tlie  Magyars  to  a  general  levy  of 
the  troops  of  Hungary,  when  all  men  were  bound  to  fight  either  in  the 
■baiidcria  of  the  prelates  or  lords,  or  in  those  of  the  coinilats,  see  page  229. 


SIEGE   OF  BELGRADE.  235 

\vhose  fervid  eloquence  had  gathered  from  the  whole  of 
Europe  an  army  of  sixty  thousand  volunteers.  This  was  l)ut  a 
small  force  with  which  to  face  the  dangers  which  threatened 
Christendom  ;  but  tlie  age  of  crusades  had  gone  by. 

The  first  collision  between  the  opposing  forces  took  place 
on  the  waters  of  the  Danube,  when  the  Magyar  fleet  overthrew 
the  galleys  of  the  Turks.  Hunyady  and  Capistrano  entered 
Belgrade.  On  the  21st  of  July,  1456,  after  having  destroyed 
the  walls  with  his  formidable  artillery,  Mahomet  endeavoured 
to  take  the  town  by  assault.  But  when  his  janissaries  had 
crossed  the  first  outworks,  they  found  themselves  before 
a  second  line  of  fortifications,  and  their  courage  failed.  Com- 
pletely repulsed  by  the  Hungarians,  the  sultan  fled  to  .Sophia, 
leaving  all  his  artillery  and  twenty-four  thousand  corpses  under 
the  walls  of  the  citadel.  Hunyady  did  not  long  survive  this 
triumph.  He  died  either  of  fatigue,  or  a  wound,  or  else  of  an 
epidemic  which  broke  out  on  the  field  of  battle.  His  con- 
temporaries pay  the  most  splendid  homage  to  his  memory, 
^'  With  him  "  says  the  pope  ^-i^neas  Sylvius,  "  have  died  our 
hopes."  "  He  was  in  all  things  an  excellent  man  !  "  exclaims 
Chalcondylas.  And  the  Polish  annalist  Dlugosz,  who  shows 
but  little  favour  to  the  Hungarians,  is  obliged  to  write,  "  He 
was  a  man  celebrated  in  fight,  and  of  great  worth  as  a  leader  of 
armies.  His  death  was  a  calamity,  not  only  for  Hungary,  but 
for  the  whole  Catholic  world." 

King  Ladislas  was  little  worthy  of  sucli  a  subject.  He  had 
already  shown  his  ingratitude,  and  the  count  of  Cilly  continued 
to  prejudice  his  sovereign  against  the  brave  warrior  even  after 
his  death.  Ladislav,  the  son,  and  Szilag}^,  the  brother  of  the 
hero,  became  possessed  of  a  letter  which  the  favourite  had 
written  to  the  despot  of  Servia,  in  which  he  proposed  to  him  to 
exterminate  "these  dogs  of  A^'allachians,"  as  he  called  the 
family  of  Hunyady.  They  resolved  to  be  beforehand  with  him, 
and  when  Cilly  came  to  Belgrade  with  the  king  they  had  him 
assassinated.  This  was  but  an  act  of  justice  according  to  the 
manners  of  the  times;  but  the  king  would  not  jxardon  it,  and  at 


236  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  instigation  of  the  palatine  Gara,  he  had  Ladislav  arrested^ 
thrown  into  prison  at  Buda  (1457),  and  then  condemned  ta 
death.  The  headsman  in  his  agitation  thrice  missed  his  aim. 
"  It  is  not  permitted  to  strike  more  than  thrice,"  said  the  son 
of  the  man  who  had  saved  Belgrade ;  but  the  king,  inflexible  in 
his  vengeance,  ordered  the  execution  to  go  on.  To  complete 
his  own  dishonour,  Ladislas  then  issued  an  edict  which  declared 
John  Hunyady  a  traitor  and  a  scoundrel.  The  Magyar  poetry 
often  recalls  the  memory  of  these  tragic  scenes.  Ladislas  the 
Posthumous  did  not  long  survive  his  shame,  dying  a  few  days 
after  his  victim  (1458). 


Mathias  Corvinus  (1458-1490) — War  with  Bohemia  and 
Turkey. 

The  memory  of  John  Hunyady  was  to  be  gloriously  avenged. 
Ladislav  Hunyady  had  perished  under  the  sword  of  the 
executioner ;  but  he  had  left  behind  him  a  brother  named 
Mathias,  This  brother  had  been  sent  into  Bohemia  by 
Ladislas  the  Posthumous,  and  now,  on  the  death  of  this  king, 
while  Bohemia  was  choosing  George  of  Podiebrad  to  reign  over 
her,  the  Hungarian  diet  assembled  at  Pesth,  and  paid  the  debt 
that  Hungary  owed  to  the  Hunyady  family  by  their  almost 
unanimous  choice  of  Mathias  as  their  king.  He  was  at  this 
time,  according  to  some  writers,  fifteen  years  of  age ;  twenty, 
according  to  others.  Szilagy  supported  the  cause  of  his 
nephew  at  the  head  of  forty  thousand  men,  and,  on  account  of 
the  king's  youth,  he  was  chosen  Guhernator  for  five  years,  and 
undertook  to  protect  the  liberties  of  the  nation.  Podiebrad 
did  not  allow  the  newly  elected  king  to  leave  Bohemia  until  he 
had  paid  a  heavy  ransom,  and  also  stipulated  that  Mathias 
.should  be  betrothed  to  his  daughter  Catherine.  He  paid 
dearly  afterwards  for  his  illiberal  conduct.  For  the  first  time 
for  many  years  Bohemia  and  Hungary  had  now  each  a  national 
king,  a  true  son  of  the  soil ;  and  the  Holy^See  and  the  house  of 
Habsburg  were  both  equally  astonished  and  annoyed  at  a  state 


M ATI II AS  CORVINUS.  237 

of  things,  which  paid  so  Httle  regard  to  their  rights  and  still 
less  to  their  claims. 

The  young  king  was  worthy  of  his  high  destiny.  He  had 
received  an  excellent  education,  could  speak  equally  well  the 
Magyar,  German, and  Slavonic  languages;  while  he  had  inherited 
■from  his  father  warlike  instincts  and  the  power  of  ruling.  He 
first  began  by  placing  the  military  forces  of  Hungary  on  a  good 
footing,  and  then  proceeded  to  reduce  those  of  the  great 
landed  nobility  who  contested  the  royal  authority.  Among 
them  were  his  uncle  Szilagy  who  had  hoped  to  keep  the  power 
in  his  own  hands  for  a  long  time  to  come,  Gara,  Jiskra  of 
Brandyse,  and  Ujlaky.  These  men  entered  into  an  alliance 
with  Frederick  HI.,  who  still  had  possession  of  the  sacred 
crown,  and  who  now  took  the  title  of  King  of  Hungary.  But 
Mathias  was  able  to  overcome  all  his  enemies,  and  the 
emperor  was  soon  forced  to  have  recourse  to  diplomacy.  He 
undertook  to  recognize  Mathias  as  his  adopted  son,  and  to 
restore  the  holy  crown,  and  in  return  obtained  his  own  recog- 
nition as  heir  to  the  throne,  in  case  Mathias  should  die  leaving 
no  children. 

Mathias  now  found  himself  free  to  pursue  the  traditional 
policy  of  the  Magyars  against  the  Turks.  In  1463,  the  kingdom 
of  Bosnia  had  been  completely  conquered  by  them ;  its  king, 
Stephen  Tomasevic,  with  the  greater  number  of  his  nobles, 
had  been  beheaded ;  thirty  thousand  young  Bosnians  had  been 
enrolled  among  the  janissaries  and  two  hundred  thousand  carried 
into  captivity.  Wallachia  also  was  entirely  under  Turkish  rule. 
The  first  step  of  Mathias  was  to  send  ambassadors  to  the 
republic  of  Venice  and  to  the  pope,  Pius  II.  (.Eneas  Sylvius) ; 
and,  with  the  help  they  granted  him,  he  was  able  to  recover 
part  of  Bosnia,  and  to  drive  the  Mussulmans  back  from 
Belgrade.  The  frontier  of  Hungary  on  the  Save  was  now 
safe ;  hut  more  remained  to  be  done  before  the  Turks  could  be 
driven  completely  out  of  the  Slavo-Hellenic  peninsula,  and  in 
such  an  enterprise  Hungary  was  naturally  expected  to  be  the 
sword  of  Europe.     An  embassy,  at  whose  head  was  Anthony 


238  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IWKGARY. 

Maiini,  a  Frenchman,  one  of  the  ministers  of  George  of 
Podiebrad,  Avas  sent  to  Mathias  by  the  French  king  to  propose 
a  Christian  league  against  the  infidels,  and  to  ask  him  to  con- 
voke a  General  Council.  Mathias  received  this  double  proposal 
with  distrust,  and,  while  acknowledging  the  friendly  relations 
which  existed  between  France  and  Hungary,  he  declined  the 
offered  alliance.  The  proposal  in  question  had  unfortunately 
been  first  planned  by  George  of  Podiebrad,  against  whom 
Mathias  felt  a  certain  amount  of  animosity,  and  moreover 
Mathias  was  annoyed  that  the  king  of  France  should  have 
acted  as  intermediary  in  the  matter.  As  to  the  council,  he 
had  no  faith  in  it  whatsoever,  believing  it  could  only  result  in 
schisms  and  disturbances.  Perhaps  too  he  remembered  the  sad 
consequences  of  the  council  of  Constance. 

Unfortunately  for  Europe,  it  was  not  against  the  Turks- 
that  Mathias  next  proceeded  to  turn  his  soldiers,  but  against 
that  same  George  of  Podiebrad  who  was  then  dreaming  of 
universal  peace.  A  strong  Catholic,  and  devoted  to  the  Holy 
See,  Mathias  looked  upon  the  Hussites  as  enemies  to  be 
detested  as  much  as  the  Turks.  Pope  Pius  II.  had  urged  him 
to  restore  the  Catholic  faith  in  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia,  and 
in  this  enterprise  he  felt  he  could  gratify  his  greed  and  spite, 
as  well  as  fulfil  his  duty  to  the  Church.  But  this  crusade 
against  Christians  Avas  delayed  by  various  complications ;  first, 
by  quarrels  with  the  emperor,  who  was  always  ready  to  inter- 
fere in  the  internal  affairs  of  Hungary,  and  then  by  a  rising  in 
Transylvania,  where  the  people  had  been  annoyed  by  an 
increase  of  taxation.  Mathias  put  down  this  revolt;  but^ 
anxious  to  punish  Stephen  of  ISIoldavia,  the  voie'vode  who 
had  supported  the  rebels,  he  undertook  an  unlucky  expedition 
against  him,  in  which  he  was  wounded.  This  delayed  matters ; 
but  in  146S  Mathias  summoned  the  estates  of  Hungary  to 
Cheb  (Eger)  to  prepare  for  the  war — a  fratricidal  war  as  it  was 
sure  to  prove — against  Bohemia.  "  It  was  "  says  the  Hungarian 
historian  Boldenyi,  "the  most  unjust  and  fruitless  war  that 
Mathias   could   possibly   undertake,  so   far   as   regarded   the 


IVAJ^    WITH  BOHEMIA.  239^ 

interests  of  Hungary.  A\'hat  glory  and  what  triumphs  would 
not  an  intimate  alliance  between  Bohemia  and  Hungary 
against  the  Mussulmans  have  secured  for  the  whole  Christian 
world !  The  face  of  eastern  Europe  might  have  been 
changed ! "  Nothing  could  have  suited  either  Turkey  or 
Austria  better  than  a  war  between  the  two  kingdoms  of  St. 
Vacslav  and  St.  Stephen.  The  Hungarian  diet  hesitated  before 
agreeing  to  it;  but  the  bishop  of  Vratislav^  (Breslau),  the  pope's 
legate,  and  the  ambassador  of  the  emperor  all  insisted  upon 
it,  and  it  was  finally  decided  upon,  w-hereupon  the  legate  wrote,. 
"  The  Church  owes  eternal  praise  to  the  king  of  Hungary." 

The  details  of  this  campaign  belong  to  the  history  of 
Bohemia.  After  various  vicissitudes  and  an  attempt  at  recon- 
ciliation with  George  of  Podiebrad,  we  have  seen  how  Mathias 
had  himself  crowned  king  of  Bohemia  at  Olomouc  on  the 
3rd  of  May,  1469,  and  how,  on  the  death  of  George,  the 
Chekhs  chose  a  Polish  king,  "Wladyslaw  Jagiello.  Mathias 
had  but  little  chance  of  keeping  the  crown  he  had  usurped  in 
defiance  of  an  adversary  who  could  bring  against  him  the 
forces  of  two  kingdoms,  and  this  chance  Avas  lessened  by  the- 
fact  that  at  this  moment  the  Turks  invaded  the  south  of 
Hungary,  while  a  conspiracy  was  formed  against  Mathias,  at 
the  head  of  which  was  the  bishop  Vitez,  who  had  been  his 
old  tutor.  The  conspirators  offered  the  crown  to  Kazimir,  a 
Polish  prince,  who  was  nephew  to  the  king  who  had  been 
slain  at  Varna.  Mathias,  however,  defeated  the  plot,  and 
persisted  in  the  war  with  Bohemia.  His  campaign  in  Silesia 
ended  in  a  victory,  and  the  treaty  which  he  signed  in  February, 
1475,  secured  to  him  INIoravia  and  part  of  Silesia.  But  this 
dismemberment  of  Bohemia  was  of  little  use  to  Hungary,  and 
the  whole  of  this  first  part  of  the  reign  of  Mathias  is  wretched 
enough.  The  second  part,  from  1475-1490,  is,  however,  more 
noble.  In  it  INIathias  adopted  wiser  political  views,  and 
directly  attacked  the  two  real  enemies  of  his  kingdom,  the 
Turk  and  the  emperor. 

^  Polish  form,  \Vioc]a\\\ 


rr40  ifisroRY  of  austko-ituxgary. 

It  was  high  time  that  he  should  turn  his  attention  to  the 
progress  of  the  Turks.  Wliile  Mathias  was  fighting  against 
Podiebrad,  Mahomet  II.  had  built  on  the  Save  the  fortress  of 
Shabats,  now  belonging  to  Servia  and  commanding  the  Save 
above  Belgrade.  The  king  began  to  understand  the  danger 
which  threatened  him.  He  made  Emerich  Szapolyai,  who 
had  been  one  of  his  most  distinguished  officers  in  the  Bohemian 
war,  regent,  and  then  besieged  and  took  the  jNTussulman 
fortress.  At  the  same  time  he  offered  to  help  prince  Stephen 
of  Moldavia,  and  his  lieutenant,  Batory,  drove  the  Turks  out 
of  that  province. 

By  his  marriage  with  Beatrix,  daughter  of  King  Ferdinand 
of  Naples,  Mathias  had  hoped  to  be  able  to  revive  the  old 
claims  of  the  house  of  Anjou  on  southern  Italy;  but  the 
emperor,  with  his  usual  jealousy  of  Hungary,  had  no  in- 
tention of  allowing  Mathias  to  enjoy  in  peace  even  the  spoils 
he  had  taken  from  Ijohemia.  AVar  between  these  two  powers 
was  inevitable,  though  when  it  came  it  proved  of  short  dura- 
tion. The  Hungarian  cavalry  invaded  Austria.  "  I  have 
never  seen  such  a  war,"  says  an  eye-witness ;  "  the  king 
followed  the  campaign  with  his  wife  and  his  mother  in  a  gilt 
-carriage ;  he  looked  as  if  he  were  going  to  a  wedding ;  each 
day  he  captured  towns  or  castles  ;  no  one  could  stand  against 
him."  Frederick  was  forced  to  take  refuge  in  Linz,  and  the 
result  of  the  war  was  that  the  emperor  recognized  the  complete 
right  of  Mathias  to  Moravia  and  Silesia  (1485). 

Mathias  now  began  to  reap  the  fruits  of  his  former  unwise 
policy,  as  he  found  himself  entirely  without  allies  at  a  time 
when  he  sorely  needed  them.  In  the  month  of  October, 
1479,  '^  formidable  army  of  Turks  invaded  Transylvania. 
The  king  sent  Stephen  Batory  against  them.  The  general 
came  up  with  them  on  the  plain  of  Kenyer-meso  (the  field  of 
corn),  and  there  obtained  a  decided  victory  over  them,  though 
the  Hungarians  were  far  fewer  in  number  than  their  opponents. 
Batory  received  six  wounds,  and  owed  his  life  to  the  heroism 
of  Kiniszy,  the  brave  leader  of  the  hussars.     The  baggage  and 


DEATH  OF  MATHIAS  CO R VI X US.  24 1 

tents  of  the  enemy  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  ^^lagyars,  who 
•celebrated  their  triumph  with  extravagant  rejoicings ;  and  the 
historians  tell  us  that  in  the  midst  of  their  rejoicings  Kiniszy 
Blight  be  seen  '•  throwing  aside  his  usual  gravity,  and  executing 
an  Hungarian  dance,  while  he  held  the  body  of  one  dead  Turk 
between  his  teeth,  and  another  in  each  of  his  arms."  Kiniszy  was 
afterwards  equally  successful  on  to  the  other  side  of  the  Danube. 

In  14S1,  the  death  of  jNIahomet  II.  increased  the  hopes  of 
the  Christians.  Bajazet  II.  succeeded  the  conqueror  of  Con- 
stantinople ;  his  struggles  against  his  brother  and  rival,  Djem,  or 
Zizira,  are  well  known.  AVhen  Zizim  became  the  prisoner  of  the 
knights  of  Rhodes,  he  offered  to  give  ^slathias  Bosnia,  Servia, 
and  Bulgaria,  if  he  would  deliver  him  from  slavery ;  but 
Hungary  had  not  at  the  time  a  single  all}^,  and  Bajazet  was 
ready  to  sign  a  truce  for  five  years,  an  offer  which  Mathias  was 
obliged  to  accept,  in  order  to  be  able  to  continue  his  war 
against  the  emperor  Frederick.  Frederick  fled  before  him  to 
Nuremburg;  but  the  Germans  of  Vienna  were  not  disposed 
to  submit  to  the  Hungarians,  and  had  to  be  reduced  by  a  long 
siege  (1485),  after  which  Mathias  placed  Stephen  Szapolyai  as 
royal  lieutenant  of  that  city. 

■\Vhen  once  the  archduchy  of  Austria  was  conquered, 
IMathias,  who  was  already  master  of  IMoravia  and  Silesia,  had 
in  his  power  a  state  almost  as  large  as  the  Austria  of  the 
present  time,  if  we  except  from  it  Galicia  and  Bohemia.  But 
his  power  had  no  solid  foundation.  Wliile  the  influence  of 
the  house  of  Austria  had  been  increased  by  marriage,  IMathias 
Corvinus  had  no  legitimate  heir.  He  made  several  attempts 
to  have  his  natural  son,  John  Corvinus,  born  in  Silesia,  recog- 
nized as  his  successor;  but  he  died  suddenly  (1490)  at  the  age 
of  fifty,  without  having  arranged  anything  definitely  for  the 
future  of  his  kingdom.  He  himself  wrote  his  own  proud 
epitaph  :  "  A  conquered  Austria  bears  witness  to  my  power. 
I  was  the  terror  of  the  world.  The  emperor  of  the  Germans 
and  the  emperor  of  the  Turks  trembled  before  me.  Death 
■alone  could  conquer  me." 

R 


242  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

Hungary  under  Mathias  Corviuus. 

The  whole  nation  mourned  for  Mathias,  and  he  is  one  of 
the  kings  whose  memory  has  remained  dearest  to  the  people. 
He  belonged  to  no  foreign  dynasty,  but  was  the  first  sove- 
reign of  purely  national  descent  since  the  house  of  Arpad ; 
and  he  had  done  great  things.  But  he  was  not  a  great  man, 
and  the  meanness  of  his  political  aims  did  more  harm  to 
Hungary  than  the  courage  and  variety  of  his  enterprises 
brought  her  real  profit.  As  a  lawgiver  and  as  the  protector 
of  literature  and  art,  his  claim  to  greatness  is  less  questionable. 
Few  sovereigns  have  been  more  careful  to  observe  the  con- 
stitution of  their  country.  He  convoked  the  diet  every  year, 
and  not  only  the  representatives  of  the  bishops  and  barons, 
but  also  the  representatives  of  the  coviitats — what  a  contem- 
porary calls  the  "  commonalty  of  the  kingdom."  The  public 
life  of  the  comitats  was  most  active  during  his  reign,  their 
assemblies  met  frequently,  and  Mathias  looked  to  them  to 
help  him  in  overcoming  the  efforts  of  the  nobles  to  make 
themselves  independent  of  the  crown.  The  king  had  the 
right  of  appointing  whom  he  pleased  to  be  the  chief  count  of 
the  comitat  {fo  ispan) ;  but  his  deputy  had  always  to  be 
chosen  from  among  the  nobles  of  the  comitat  itself.  The 
authority  of  the  palatine^  was  lessened,  and  he  was  deprived 
of  those  judicial  powers  which  had  made  him  the  chief  justice 
of  the  kingdom.  Although  very  religious  and  devoted  to 
the  Holy  See,  though  in  a  somewhat  intermittent  and  capricious 
fashion,  Mathias  restrained  the  clergy,  and  would  allow  of  no 
appeals  to  the  court  of  Rome.  But,  above  all  things,  he 
endeavoured  to  lessen  the  privileges  of  the  great  barons.  "  Now 
Mathias  is  dead,  justice  has  fled,"  is  a  Magyar  proverb  which 
has  come  down  to  the  present  time.  He  took  great  pains  to 
protect  commerce,  and  invited  foreigners  to  his  kingdom, 
especially  the  Servians,  who  came  in  great  numbers  after  the 
death  of  Brankovic  and  the  final  ruin  of  the  old  Servian  empire. 

'  For  the  previous  history  of  tlie  office  of  Palatine,  see  siifra,  p.  69. 


STATE   OF  HUXGARY  UNDER    CORJ'INC'S.  243 

Mathias  had  a  highly  cultivated  mind,  and  possessed  that 
spirit  of  repartee  which  makes  a  king  so  popular,  "  He  is  a 
Avise  and  learned  king,  of  most  dignified  speech,"  writes  the 
pope's  legate  of  him  ;  "  he  only  says  what  is  fitting,  and  his 
wisdom  and  eloquence  surpass  those  of  all  the  princes  that  I 
know." 

His  second  wife,  Beatrix,  had  brought  from  Italy  the  love 
of  elegance  which  was  the  result  of  the  Renaissance,  and 
many  Italians  lived  in  the  court  at  Buda,  some  of  whom 
adorned  the  country  with  fine  buildings.  The  king's  palace 
was  magnificent  and  full  of  precious  things.  The  pontifical 
legate  says  that  fifty  waggons  would  have  been  needed  to 
transport  only  the  plates  and  dishes  of  the  royal  household. 

Mathias  founded  the  famous  Corvina  Library  at  Buda,  the 
first  library  in  the  kingdom.  It  is  said  to  have  contained  fifty 
thousand  manuscripts — an  enormous  number  for  the  time. 
The  king  sent  his  agents  all  over  the  world  to  buy  and  to 
copy,  and  thirty  copyists  were  constantly  employed  at  Buda. 
He  gathered  round  him  national  poets,  who  sang  his  exploits 
in  the  Magyar  tongue ;  but  unhappily  all  their  works  have 
perished,  and  the  only  Hungarian  manuscripts  which  ha\-e 
come  down  to  us  from  this  time  relate  to  theological  matters. 
The  Reformation  was  needed  to  give  the  national  language 
her  true  place  in  literature. 

The  treasures  of  the  Corvina  Librar}-  were  unfortunatel}' 
wasted  or  lost  in  the  succeeding  centuries,  some  of  them  being 
sold  by  the  kings  of  the  Jagellon  dynasty,  and  the  Turks 
carrying  off  the  rest  to  Constantinople.  A  few  of  the  manu- 
scripts are  still  to  be  seen  in  Paris,  among  them  a  I'tolemy 
and  a  St.  Jerome ;  a  few  are  in  Vienna  and  Pesth ;  and  recently 
some  volumes  which  had  remained  in  Constantinople  were 
restored  to  Hungary  by  the  Turks,  as  an  expression  of  the 
sympathy  of  the  two  nations  during  the  campaign  of  Russia 
in  Bulgaria  in  1877.  But  the  age  of  manuscripts  was  almost 
at  an  end,  for  the  art  of  printing  had  reached  Buda  from 
Ciermany  in  1473,  ^^'^  the  trade  in  books  had  begun.     By  the 


244  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

end   of  the   fifteenth    century    iJuda    possessed   as    many   as 
thirteen  booksellers. 

At  this  time  we  meet  with  the  first  beginnings  of  a  learned 
society,  called  "Sodalitas  litteraria  Hungarorum."  Among  the 
writers  of  the  time  the  majority  are  Italians  or  Greeks  (Cali- 
machus,  Eonfinius) ;  but  some  of  them  are  natives,  as,  for 
example,  John  Pannonius,  bishop  of  Pecs  (Fiinfkirchen),  a 
T.atin  poet  of  some  value,  and  John  Thuroczy,  author  of  the 
"  Chronicles  of  Hungary."  Mathias  Corvinus  intended  to 
found  a  gigantic  university  at  Buda,  but  his  death  prevented 
the  realization  of  this  project,  though  an  Academia  Cor- 
viniana,  which  included  the  two  faculties  of  theology  and 
philosophy,  existed  down  to  the  time  of  the  battle  of  INIohacs. 

Wladyslaiv  II.  ( 1490-15 1 6) — Verhoczy — Revolt  of  the  Kurucs 

(1514)- 

Hungary  reached  her  highest  point  in  the  reign  of  Mathias 
Corvinus,  and  from  this  time  we  shall  have  to  watch  her 
hopeless  decay.  The  diet,  divided  by  the  ambition  of  rival 
barons,  could  decide  on  no  national  king,  and  so  turned  to  a 
foreigner.  Wladyslaw  H.,  of  the  house  of  Jagellon,  was  elected, 
and  thus  a  king  of  Bohemia,  and  an  old  rival  of  Mathias, 
united  the  two  crowns  of  St.  Vacslav  and  St.  Stephen — a  union 
which  had  been  so  ardently  hoped  for  by  Mathias,  and  for 
which  he  had  waged  the  miserable  war  against  Bohemia. 

The  choice  of  the  diet  was  not  prompted  by  the  true 
interests  of  the  two  kingdoms,  for  Wladyslaw  was  feeble  and 
insignificant.  The  people  called  him  "  King  Dobre."  This 
Chekh  adverb,  which  means  "good,"  or  "well,"  was  always  in 
his  mouth,  and  was  a  sign  of  that  inertia  which  was  one  of  his 
strongest  recommendations  to  the  turbulent  aristocracy,  who 
were  glad  to  take  breatli  under  a  feeble  sovereign,  after  the 
harsh  rule  of  Corvinus.  Petofi,  the  national  poet  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  has  devoted  one  of  his  best  satires  to 
King  Dobre.  "  He  cared  not  to  command — He  knew  not 
liow  to  do  it ; — And  even  if  he  had  known — The  land  would 


IVLAD  YSLA IV  II.  245 

not  have  obeyed. — His  head  was  very  empty, — Emptier  still 
were  his  pockets. — He  must  fumble  to  the  bottom — To  find 
one  single  coin.  Insects  and  the  weather — Had  eaten  away 
the  fur  from  his  garments, — And  his  clothes  were  so  worn  that 
they  had  lost  all  their  colour,"  etc. 

The  beginning  of  the  new  reign  was  not  fortunate.  ]\Iaxi- 
milian  recovered  the  Austrian  provinces,  and  John  of  Poland 
declared  war  against  his  brother,  Wladyslaw,  and  obliged  him 
to  cede  part  of  Silesia  to  him.  Maximilian  invaded  the  west 
of  Hungary,  and  got  as  far  as  Szekes  Fejervar  (Stuhl  Weissen- 
berg),  whence  he  only  consented  to  retire  after  "Wladislaw  had 
agreed  to  a  treaty,  which  secured  Hungary  to  the  house  of 
Austria,  in  case  of  Wladyslaw  dying  without  children.  This 
treaty,  in  which  the  king  disposed  of  the  country  without 
consulting  the  diet,  roused  universal  indignation,  and  made  a 
sovereign  who  had  been  received  at  first  with  the  greatest 
enthusiasm  universally  unpopular. 

Meanwhile,  the  Turks  thronged  round  the  southern  frontier 
of  the  kingdom.  Bajazet  II.  had  failed  to  capture  Belgrade 
in  1492,  but  he  could  not  be  prevented  from  forcing  his  way 
into  the  valley  of  the  Save,  and  beating  the  Hungarian  army, 
which  was  badly  paid  and  badly  disciplined.  The  diet  of  the 
following  year  was  full  of  bitter  complaints  of  the  cowardice 
and  laziness  of  the  king,  who  preferred  "  the  rest  and  amuse- 
ment of  the  chase  to  the  duties  of  war."  The  finances  were 
in  the  greatest  disorder,  and  the  great  barons  were  still  quarrel- 
ling over  the  possession  of  power.  In  the  year  1505,  the  diet 
came  to  a  most  important  decision.  "  This  kingdom,"  says 
its  manifesto,  "  has  often  been  ruled  by  foreigners.  Never 
has  it  suffered  so  cruelly  as  under  their  reigns.  Busied  only 
with  the  interests  of  their  own  families,  instead  of  studying 
the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Scythian  people,  who  have 
made  themselves,  at  the  price  of  their  blood,  masters  of  the 
soil  they  occupy,  these  foreigners  have  given  themselves  up 
to  idleness  rather  than  to  the  toils  of  war.  Thus  have  we 
lost  Servia,  Galicia,  Lodomeria,  Bulgaria,  and  Dalmatia.  .  .  . 


2^6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

This  loss  of  our  frontiers  may  well  make  us  fear  that  our 
enemies  may  invade  our  land  itself,  if  the  nation,  out  of  its 
love  for  its  native  soil,  does  not  chose  from  among  its  own 
sons  an  able  king."  It  then  went  on  to  declare  any  one  who 
should  in  future  support  the  claims  of  a  foreigner  to  the 
throne  a  traitor  to  his  country.  This  expression  of  patriotism 
came  somewhat  late,  and  the  nobles  had  no  one  to  thank  but 
themselves  if  their  country  had  so  often  been  ruled  by 
foreigners.  The  manifesto,  which  was  the  work  of  the  protho- 
notary,  Stephen  Verboczy,  was  sent  round  to  all  the  coinitafs. 
Verboczy  was  a  man  of  legislative  genius,  and  a  true  patriot, 
Avho  in  his  youth  had  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  the 
laws  of  Hungary  in  the  academy  at  Buda.  But,  unhappily, 
legal  maxims,  with  whatsoever  eloquence  they  might  be  drawn 
up,  were  of  small  avail  against  brute  force. 

Wladyslaw  had  one  son,  Louis.  Surrounded  by  the  net  of 
Austrian  diplomacy,  he  had  affianced  this  son  in  his  cradle  to 
Mary  of  Austria,  the  sister  of  Charles  V.,  and  later  on  he 
undertook,  in  defiance  of  public  opinion,  to  leave  the  crown  to 
his  daughter  xVnne,  who  was  betrothed  to  Ferdinand  of  Austria, 
if  Louis  should  die  without  heirs.  He  was  so  completely  care- 
less of  the  interests  of  Hungary,  that  he  never  took  advantage 
of  the  league  of  Cambray  to  recover  Dalmatia  from  the 
Venetians.  To  add  to  the  miseries  of  his  reign,  a  peasant 
rising,  a  terrible  Jacquerie,  took  place.  Hungary  was  an 
essentially  aristocratic  country,  in  which  the  great  barons  had 
endeavoured  by  every  means  in  their  power  to  crush  the  small 
landholders  ;  they  in  their  turn  harassed  the  peasants.  As  a 
natural  consequence  of  this  state  of  things,  bitter  animosities 
had  arisen  among  the  rural  class  against  those  above  them,  and 
only  waited  for  a  favourable  opportunity  to  break  out.  In 
15 13,  Cardinal  Ijakracz  came  from  Rome,  bringing  with  him 
the  papal  bull  for  a  crusade  against  the  infidels  ;  whereupon 
the  peasants  armed  themselves,  as  if  they  were  about  to  march 
against  tlie  Turks,  and  then  turned  their  arms  against  the 
nobles.       This    terrible   insurrection   is   called    in   Hunsiarian 


REVOLT  OF   THE  KURUCS.  247 

liistory  the  insurrection  of  the  Kurucs  (Kouroutses,  cniciati) 
crusaders.  Was  the  name  really  invented  at  this  time  ?  Per- 
haps it  had  been  used  at  the  time  of  the  first  crusade,  when 
the  defenders  of  Palestine  crossed  Hungary,  ravaging  it  as 
they  went.  The  chief  leader  of  the  insurrection,  the  peasant 
Dosza,  was  one  of  the  Szeklers  of  Transylvania.  From  his 
.camp  at  Cseged  he  issued  a  proclamation  in  which  he  styles 
himself  "the  Mighty  Knight,  the  General  of  the  Crusaders, 
subject  to  the  king  but  not  to  the  nobles,"  and  in  which  he  calls 
the  peasants  to  arms  against  the  infidel  barons.  Armed  with 
•scythes,  the  peasants  marched  against  them.  Defeated  in  the 
first  encounter,  the  nobles  chose  John  Szapolyai,  voievode  of 
Transylvania,  as  their  leader,  and  Dosza  was  beaten  in  a  battle 
near  Temesvar,  and  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies.  Their 
■vengeance  was  terrible.  The  king  of  the  peasants  was  seated 
on  a  throne  of  fire,  and  crowned  by  the  executioner  with  a  red- 
hot  crown.^  He  bore  his  frightful  sufferings  with  a  courage  that 
astonished  his  adversaries.  The  people  believe  that  Szapolyai 
became  blind  for  two  years,  as  a  punishment  for  the  cruelty  he 
showed  on  this  occasion,  and  that  he  only  recovered  his  sight 
in  answer  to  the  fervent  prayers  of  his  family.  The  name  of 
Dosza  is  still  popular  among  the  Hungarians,  and  that  of 
Kurucs  appears  more  than  once  in  the  national  histor}-. 
Kurucs  is  the  Hodge  of  Hungary. 

It  was  hoped  that  order  would  be  restored  when  this  insur- 
rection came  to  an  end.  In  the  year  15 14,  Verboczy  presented 
to  the  diet  his  celebrated  work  "  Decretum  bipartitum  juris  con- 
suetudinarii,"  in  which  he  had  compiled  the  law  of  the  land,  and 
which  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  last  will  and  testament  of 
independent  Hungary.  It  proves  a  condition  of  things  which 
justifies  the  insurrection  of  the  Kurucs,  and  amply  explains 
the  numerous  revolts  of  which    the  kingdom  had  been  the 

'  Goklsmitb,  mistaking,  however,  his  name,  refers  to  him  in   "The 
Traveller,"  line  435 — 

"  The  lifted  axe,  the  agonizing  wheel, 
Luke's  iron  cro^cii  and  Damions'  bed  of  steel." 


248  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARW 

theatre.  Verboczy  recognizes  but  one  legal  class — the  nobles 
descended  from  the  conquerors  of  the  soil.  As  for  the  rest, 
they  are  Jobbagj-ones,  serfs  of  the  soil,  "whom  the  revolt  of 
Dosza  has  proved  for  ever  to  be  infidels,  and  fit  only  for 
perpetual  servitude."  The  privileged  class  never  fails  to  make 
use  of  the  mistakes  and  the  crimes  of  its  inferiors  as  arguments 
for  the  maintenance  and  even  the  increase  of  its  own  privileges. 

Louis  II.  (1516-1526) — Loss  of  Belgrade  (1521) — Battle  of 
MoJiacs  (1526). 

The  feeble  Wladyslavv  died  in  15 15,  and  the  reign  of  the 
child-king,  Louis  II.,  may  be  summed  up  in  two  catastrophes, 
the  loss  of  Belgrade  and  the  defeat  at  IMohacs.  The  young 
king,  married  in  his  cradle,  was  corrupt  and  dissolute,  and 
<iuite  incapable  of  governing,  and  his  guardians  could  not  rise 
to  the  height  of  the  occasion.  The  finances  of  the  kingdom 
were  in  great  disorder,  and  tlie  leading  barons  quarrelled 
continually  over  the  shreds  of  sovereignty  still  left,  exercising 
in  turns  and  occasionally  by  main  force,  powers  which  belonged 
to  the  sovereign  alone.  This  state  of  things  was  of  the  greatest 
use  to  the  Turks,  for  while  Hungary  was  sinking  ever  deeper 
into  anarchy,  Turkey  was  ruled  by  the  great  sovereign  who 
was  called  Soliman  the  jNIagnificent.  It  Avas  not  long  before 
he  found  a  pretext  for  war  in  the  arrest  of  one  of  his  subjects 
as  a  spy,  and  assembled  his  troops  at  Sophia,  captured  Shabats, 
laid  siege  to  Belgrade  and  took  it,  making  it  thenceforward  a 
Mussulman  fortress  (1521).  The  key  of  the  Danube  was  now 
in  the  hands  of  the  Turks.  In  the  face  of  this  extreme  danger, 
Hungary  continued  at  strife,  divided  between  two  parties,  that 
of  the  palatine  Batory  and  that  of  Verboczy,  who  disputed  for 
power ;  and  the  violence  of  these  internal  struggles  prevented 
the  public  attention  from  being  directed  towards  tine  common 
enemy. 

Meanwhile,  King  Louis  begged  for  help  on  every  side. 
He  wrote  to  the  king  of  England,  "  If  help  from  your  majesty 
does  not  readi  us  quickly,  our  kingdom  is  lost ; "  and  he  even. 


BATTLE   OF  MO H ACS.  249 

applied  for  aid  from  a  Persian  prince,  hoping  tliereby  to  divert 
the  attention  of  the  Mussulmans  to  the  East.  The  Austrian 
princes  were  ready  to  help  him  from  interested  motives;  but  even 
when  joined  with  Hungary  they  were  too  feeble  to  conquer  the 
armies  of  "the  Magnificent."  On  the  25th  of  April,  1526, 
Soliman  quitted  Constantinople,  bringing  with  him  one  hundred 
thousand  men  and  three  hundred  cannon,  taking  up  arms  not 
only  against  Hungary,  but  against  the  empire.  One  of  the 
pretexts  for  his  expedition  was  the  captivity  of  Francis  I. ;  he 
wished  he  said,  to  save  "  the  bey  of  France  "  from  the  hands  of 
the  Germans  and  their  allies  the  Hungarians.  He  crossed  the 
Save  near  Osiek  (Essek),  captured  Petervardin,  and  came  up 
with  the  Hungarians  at  INIohacs,  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Danube  (August  2  6, 1 5 2 6).  The  Magyar  army  was  commanded 
by  the  king  in  person,  assisted  by  Paul  Tomory,  archbishop  of 
Kalocsa,  one  of  the  warlike  bishops  of  whom  Hungary  gives  us 
so  many  examples ;  by  George  Szapolyai,  and  by  Peter  Perenyi, 
bishop  of  Nagy-Varad  (Great  Varadin).  Perenyi  wished  to 
treat  with  the  Turks,  in  order  to  gain  time  for  help  to  reach 
them  from  Croatia  and  Transylvania,  but  the  impetuosity  of 
Tomory  decided  on  immediate  battle.  "  Tomory,  proud 
captain,  why  didst  thou  quit  thy  bishop's  throne  ?  Then  the 
glory,  the  flower  of  the  fatherland,  would  not  have  died  with 
thee  ! "  cries  the  poet  Kisfaludy.  At  first,  it  seemed  as  if  the 
battle  was  in  favour  of  the  Magyars ;  but  Soliman  had  com- 
manded that  the  front  ranks  of  his  army  should  give  way  before 
the  Hungarian  cavalry,  and  that  then  the  main  body  of  his 
troops  should  close  around  them.  "When  the  Magyars  were 
thus  easily  within  reach,  they  were  overwhelmed  by  the  Turkish 
artillery  and  forced  to  retreat.  They  took  refuge  in  some 
marshy  land,  in  which  many  of  them  lost  their  lives.  The  king 
had  disappeared  ;  Tomory  was  slain  ;  seven  bishops,  twenty-two 
barons,  and  twenty-two  thousand  men  were  left  upon  the  field. 
The  road  to  Buda  lay  open  before  the  invaders,  and  after 
having  laid  waste  the  whole  country  on  their  way,  they  reached 
the. capital,  where  the  treasures  which  Mathias  Corvinus  had 


2  50  JflSTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

collected  ia  his  palace  and  his  library  were  either  carried  olT 
or  committed  to  the  flames,  while  the  statues  were  sent  down 
ihe  Danube  to  adorn  the  public  squares  of  Constantinople. 
Then  the  tide  of  invasion  gradually  retired,  leaving  behind  it 
a  land  covered  with  ruins.  The  independent  existence  of 
Hungary  ended  with  Louis  II.  Up  to  the  time  of  the 
accession  of  the  house  of  Austria,  this  kingdom  had  had  twenty- 
three  princes  of  the  house  of  Arpad,  and  fourteen  who  had 
belonged  to  various  other  families.  Henceforward  it  was  to 
oscillate  between  Austria  and  Turkey,  and  must  continue  to 
do  so  down  to  the  time  when  the  feeling  of  nationality  should 
become  sufficiently  strong  to  enable  it  to  become  once  more  a 
nation  governing  itself. 


CHAPTER    XVL 

IHE   AUSTRIAN    EMPERORS. 

Maximilian  I.  {1493-1519) — The  Austrian  Marriages. 

The  real  importance  of  the  house  of  Austria  dates  from  tlie 
reign  of  Maximilian.  In  his  hands  all  the  domains  of  the 
family  were  united — Austria  properly  so  called,  Styria,  Carinthia, 
Carniola,  and  the  Tyrol ;  and  its  territories  reached  to  the  sea 
at  Trieste  and  Fiume.  On  the  death  of  Leonard,  the  last 
descendant  of  the  junior  branch  of  the  counts  of  Gorica,  in 
1500,  Maximilian  succeeded  to  Gorica,  Gradiska,  Mitterburg, 
and  the  Pusterthal.  It  is  true  that  during  his  war  with  Venice 
(1507)  he  lost  for  a  time  his  possessions  on  the  Adriatic,  but 
it  was  not  long  before  he  recovered  them,  and  even  invaded 
part  of  the  A^enetian  territory.  The  principal  event  of  his 
reign  as  emperor  is  his  struggle  with  France  for  the  inheritance 
of  the  dukes  of  Burgundy ;  but  that  belongs  to  European 
ihistory,  and  does  not  here  concern  us.  He  took  an  active 
part  in  the  affairs  of  Europe.  A  temperament  at  once  chivalrous 
and  dreamy  led  him  to  conceive  all  kinds  of  strange  projects, 
among  which  was  that  of  one  day  obtaining  for  himself  the 
pontifical  tiara;  but  he  never  lost  sight  of  the  interests  of  his 
hereditary  states.  He  tried  hard  to  have  Austria  made  an 
electorate,  but  failed,  owing  to  the  obstinacy  of  the  German 
princes.  The  electors  met  at  Frankfort  and  mutually  engaged 
never  to  admit  a  new  member  into  their  college,  and  the 
emperor   was   obliged   to   abandon   this   project.      Thus   tlie 


2  52  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

family  with  whom  tlie  imperial  crown  remained  during  so 
many  centuries  was  always  excluded  from  the  body  which 
conferred  it.  When,  later  on,  the  Habsburgs  formed  part  of 
the  electoral  college,  they  entered  it  as  kings  of  Bohemia. 

It  was  under  Maximilian  that  the  Swiss  were  finally 
released  from  all  obligations  towards  the  house  of  Austria  and 
the  emperor.  After  a  war  in  which  the  confederates  had 
invaded  Suabia  and  the  Tyrol,  had  destroyed  two  hundred 
villages  and  castles,  and  had  slain  more  than  twenty  thousand 
men,  the  peace  of  Basel  was  concluded  in  1499.  Austria 
did  not  suffer  by  surrendering  her  claims  in  this  quarter,  for 
her  power  was  only  increased  by  concentration. 

In  1505,  Maximilian  interfered  in  the  war  of  the  Bavarian 
succession,  which  broke  out  on  the  extinction  of  the  male  line 
of  Wittelsbach,  and  obtained  a  certain  number  of  towns, 
among  them  Kufstein,  already  celebrated  for  its  fortress,  and 
the  lordships  of  Rottenburg  and  Kitzbiihl,  as  the  price  of  his 
interference.  Thus  Austria  obtained  a  footing  on  the  sources 
of  the  Isonzo  and  the  Drave.  At  this  time  the  Austrian 
states,  without  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  formed  a  semicircle 
which  shut  in  Southern  Germany  from  the  frontiers  of  Bohemia 
and  Silesia  down  to  Switzerland,  while  their  possessions 
scattered  in  Suabia,  Alsace,  and  the  Black  Forest  gave  them 
considerable  influence  in  the  valleys  of  the  Upper  Rhine  and 
Upper  Danube.  Considered  apart  from  its  German  territories, 
the  little  Austrian  state,  this  miniature  of  the  future  Austria, 
included  within  its  borders  Germans,  Slavs  (Slovenes),  and 
Italians  ;  but  then,  as  now,  the  Germans  were  the  dominant 
race,  owing  to  the  close  neighbourhood  of  Germany,  to  the 
vigour  of  the  race,  and  to  the  prestige  of  the  imperial  crown. 

When  Germany  was  divided  into  ten  circles  at  the  diet  of 
Cologne  (15 1 2),  the  Austrian  possessions  formed  one  of  them. 
Of  course  neither  Bohemia  nor  Hungary  were  included  in  the 
circles  of  the  empire,  because  they  were  independent  kingdoms  ; 
but  Maximilian  neglected  no  opportunity  of  identifying  the 
interests  of  his  family  with  those  of  Germany,  and  in  a  diet 


MAXIMILIAN  I.  253 

held  in  1506  he  had  declared  ''that  he  hoped  some  day  to  be 
able  to  add  the  crowns  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary  to  the 
empire,  if  he  should  receive  aid,  and  if  the  Hungarians  should 
be  reduced  to  obedience."  The  internal  organization  of  the 
Austrian  circle  was  settled  at  a  diet  which  met  at  Innsbruck  in 
1518.  As  early  as  1501,  Maximilian  had  founded  a  College  of 
Government  {Hofraths  Collcgiuni)  at  Vienna,  which  super- 
intended the  circle  and  helped  him  in  the  management  of  the 
affairs  of  the  empire ;  this  college  ended  by  confining  its 
attention  to  exclusively  German  matters,  and,  under  the  name 
of  the  Reichshofrath,  came  in  the  time  of  Ferdinand  II.  to  be 
only  second  in  importance  in  the  constitution  of  the  empire 
to  the  diet  itself. 

It  is  well  known  how  Maximilian  raised  the  power  of  the 
house  of  Austria  enormously  by  the  marriages  which  he 
brought  about.^  By  his  own  marriage  with  Mary  of  Bur- 
gundy (1477),  he  prepared  the  way  for  Charles  V.'s  rule  over 
Spain,  the  Indies,  and  Southern  Italy  ;  but  this  union  had  wo 
direct  influence  on  Austria  properly  so  called.  It  was  the 
marriages  entered  into  with  the  family  then  reigning  in  Bohemia 
and  Hungary  which  made  the  Austrian  empire  of  our  times. 
And  he  was  only  carrying  out  the  ancient  policy  of  his  family 
when,  in  1515,  Maximilian  arranged  the  marriages  of  his  grand- 
children, Ferdinand  and  Mary  of  Austria,  with  I>ouis  and  Anna, 
the  children  of  Wladyslaw,  king  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary.  On 
this  occasion,  Wladyslaw  and  his  brother,  Sigismund  of  Poland, 
made  a  splendid  \-isit  to  A^ienna,  when  they  renewed  the  old 
treaties  of  inheritance  between  Austria,  Bohemia,  and  Hungary, 
The  greed  of  Austria  was  helped  more  by  fortune  even  than  by 
policy ;  every  event  seemed  to  turn  to  its  advantage,  and 
among  them  the  terrible  defeat  of  Mohacs,  which  might  have 

'  These  celebrated  lines  have  been  often  quoted  : 

"  Bella  gerant  fortes  :  tu,  felix  Austria,  nubc  : 
Nam  quae  Mars  aliis,  dat  tibi  regna  Venus." 
They  have  been  attributed  to  Mathias  Corvinus,  but  we  know  not  on 
what  authority.      We  have  been  unable  to  discover  who  was  the  author. — 
Leger. 


254  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-IIUXGARY. 

proved  so  fatal  to  Christendom.  Owing  to  its  treaties  and 
their  results,  Austria  was  to  become  one  of  the  most  important 
constituents  in  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  Init  un- 
fortunately the  part  she  played  in  European  history  from  the 
sixteenth  century  onwards  has  made  us  too  much  forget  the 
internal  history  of  the  nations  involved  in  her  destiny. 

The  most  important  event  which  occurred  in  the  hereditary 
jn'ovinces  in  the  reign  of  Maximilian,  besides  the  invasions  of 
the  Venetians,  Swiss,  and  Turks,  was  the  peasant  war  which 
broke  out  in  Carniola  (1515),  and  soon  spread  to  the 
neighbouring  provinces.  It  took  place  at  the  same  time  as 
the  insurrection  of  Dosza  in  Hungary,  and  like  it  was  caused 
by  famine  and  the  exactions  of  a  selfish  nobility.  The  Slovene 
jjeasants  of  Carniola  adopted  as  their  motto,  Stara  pravda 
("  Our  old  rights  "),  and  declared,  like  the  Magyar  Kurucs,  that 
they  took  up  arms  against  the  nobles  and  not  against  the 
sovereign.  The  insurrection  spread  from  Slovenic  Carniola 
into  the  German  portions  of  Styria  and  Carniola ;  and  if  we 
are  to  believe  contemporary  writers,  the  peasants  set  on  foot 
an  army  of  eighty  thousand  men,  and  spread  terror  all  around, 
capturing  castles  and  hanging  some  of  the  nobles.  As  in 
Hungary,  the  revolt  was  put  down  with  the  utmost  cruelt)'. 

Maximilian  was  always  in  want  of  money,  and  frequently 
summoned  the  diets  of  the  hereditary  provinces  to  beg  for 
subsidies,  which  were  more  than  once  refused  him.  The 
provinces  were  poor,  but  he  was  still  poorer.  "The  most 
wretched  thing  of  all  is  our  poverty  ! "  he  exclaimed,  after  his 
unsuccessful  war  against  Venice.  He  was  obliged  at  last  t» 
promise  that  he  would  undertake  no  war  without  the  consent 
of  the  Estates.  In  his  reign  the  several  pro^inces  began  to- 
discuss  their  common  interests  in  general  diets  to  which  they 
sent  delegates.  Thus  we  find,  at  a  diet  held  at  Wiener- 
Neustadt  in  1502,  Upper  and  Lower  Austria,  Styria,  Carinthia, 
and  Carniola  all  represented. 

Maximilian  died  in  15 19,  and  was  buried  in  the  town  of 
Innsbruck,  which  had  been  his  favourite  place  of  residence. 


FERDIXAND  I.  255 

He  was  a  great  hunter,  and  liked  the  Tyrol  because  of  its- 
mountains  and  its  chamois.  Incidents  which  happened  on 
some  of  the  imperial  hunts  have  become  the  subject  of  popular 
legends,  and  no  Austrian  sovereign  since  the  time  of  Rudolf 
has  been  so  much  beloved  by  posterity.  He  himself  helped 
this  popularity  by  the  two  poems,  "  Theuerdank  "  and  "  Weiss 
Konig,"  which  were  inspired  and  perhaps  partly  written  by 
him.  He  loved  artists  and  learned  men,  and  protected  the 
Sodalitas  Dannbiana,  a  sort  of  academy  which  had  been 
founded  at  Vienna  by  the  humanist  Conrad  Celtes. 

Though  he  had  had  two  wives,  ]\Iary  of  Burgundy  and 
Blanche  of  ]\lilan,  Maximilian  had  only  one  legitimate  son, 
PhiHp  the  Handsome,  who  died  in  1500;  but  his  various  con- 
cubines had  presented  him  with  fourteen  natural  children. 
Charles  V.  and  Ferdinand  I.  were  the  two  sons  of  Philip  the 
Handsome.  Between  them  they  were  to  divide  the  empire  of 
Europe  and  carry  the  name  of  Austria  to  the  savannahs  of 
the  New  World. 

Ferdinand  I.  (15 19-15  64) — The  Reformation  in  Austria. 

Ferdinand  I.  (15 19)  was  educated  in  Spain;  his  brother,^ 
Charles  V.,  in  the  Low  Countries.  Both  brothers  were  at 
a  great  distance  from  the  hereditary  provinces  at  the  time 
of  their  grandfather  Maximilian's  death,  and  these  provinces 
were  governed  for  some  time  by  lieutenants.  Charles  w^as- 
elected  emperor  on  the  ist  of  June,  15 19,  but  it  was  not  until 
1 52 1  that  the  division  of  the  domains  between  the  brothers 
was  concluded,  and  it  was  agreed  that  Ferdinand  should  have 
Austria,  Styria,  Carinthia,  and  Carniola,  and  the  emperor  Outer 
Austria,  the  Tyrol,  Gorica,  Friuli,  and  Trieste.  But  the  states 
of  Carinthia  and  Carniola  objected  to  a  division  which  altered 
their  frontiers,  and  Charles  eventually  gave  up  the  contested 
country  to  his  brother,  and  ended  by  yielding  to  him  all  his 
(lerman  possessions.  He  kept,  however,  the  title  of  duke  of 
Austria,  and  Ferdinand  took  that  of  imperial  lieutenant.  It 
was  not  without  distrust  that  the  half- Spanish  prir.cc  Ferdinand 


256  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARV. 

\vas  received  in  the  country,  for  he  was  a  stranger,  and  tlie 
foreign  advisers  whom  he  had  brought  with  him  were  extremely 
unpopular.  His  arrival  was  followed  by  disturbances  in  Vienna, 
and  the  heads  of  the  two  chief  rebels,  Eicinger  and  Pucheim, 
fell  on  the  scaffold  (1522). 

On  the  27th  of  May,  152 1,  at  Linz,  Ferdinand  celebrated 
his  marriage  with  the  ])rincess  Anna,  sister  of  Louis,  king  of 
Boliemia  and  Hungary,  and  at  the  same  time  Louis,  who  was 
then  fifteen  years  of  age,  married  Mary,  the  sister  of  Ferdinand. 
Thus  the  wise  matrimonial  plans  of  Maximilian  were  carried 
into  execution.  But  this  double  marriage  could  not  absolutely 
guarantee  the  possession  of  the  two  crowns  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary,  as  that  depended  on  the  consent  of  the  Estates.  And 
even  when  this  had  been  obtained  and  they  had  accepted  the 
rule  of  a  foreign  prince,  it  was  the  intention  of  both  Bohemia 
and  Hungary  to  remain  quite  distinct  from  the  group  of 
Austrian  states,  and  to  have  nothing  in  common  with  them 
but  the  person  of  the  sovereign.  At  his  coronations  at  Prague 
and  at  Buda  he  had  to  swear  to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  two 
kingdoms,  and  their  history  ought  not  to  be  mixed  up  with 
that  of  the  hereditary  states,  but  to  be  studied  separately  with 
all  the  minuteness  it  deserves. 

At  present  it  is  our  business  to  relate  the  history  of  the 
Austrian  states  from  the  accession  of  Ferdinand  L  to  tlie 
death  of  Charles  VI.,  who  by  his  Pragmatic  Sanction  was  to 
take  a  decisive  step  towards  uniting  the  various  parts  of  the 
Austrian  monarchy.  The  name  of  Ferdinand  shines  but  dimly 
by  the  side  of  that  of  Charles  V.,  and  yet  only  a  memory 
survives  to-day  of  the  empire  of  Charles,  on  which  the  sun 
never  set,  while  Ferdinand's  reign  marks  the  rise  of  a  state 
which  even  now  plays  an  important  part  in  the  destinies  of 
Europe.  The  Spanish  branch  of  the  house  of  Habsburg 
attained  its  highest  point  of  power  at  the  time  of  the  treaty  of 
Chateau -Cambresis  in  1559,  and  by  the  treaty  of  Vervins  its 
decline  is  shown  to  have  begun  as  early  as  1598.  The  Austrian 
branch,    owing   to   its   possession    of  the    Hereditary   States, 


FERDINAND  I.  257 

Bohemia,  Hungary,  and  the  imperial  crown,  grew  steadily  in 
power,  and  to  it  was  reserved,  at  the  beginning  of  our  century, 
the  honour  of  upsetting  the  crowned  revolutionist  who  believed 
he  had  restored  the  empire  of  Charles  V. 

Ferdinand  became  king  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary  in  the 
year  1526,  and,  notwithstanding  the  opposition  of  the  Protestant 
party,  he  was  elected  king  of  the  Romans  in  1531.  From  this 
time  the  imperial  crown  remained  with  the  house  of  Austria. 
The  care  of  two  kingdoms  and  an  empire  did  not  prevent  the 
successor  of  the  Habsburgs  from  attending  to  his  own  hereditary 
domains,  and  at  the  close  of  the  war  of  Smalkalde  he  was  able 
to  annex  the  town  of  Constance,  which  had  been  put  under 
the  ban  of  the  empire  in  consequence  of  its  adherence  to  the 
league  of  Protestant  princes,  and  to  buy  the  counties  of  Bregenz 
and  Thengen. 

Notwithstanding  his  attachment  to  Catholicism,  Ferdinand 
was  not  able  to  keep  the  Reformation  out  of  his  kingdom.  As 
was  the  case  in  Germany,  the  preaching  of  the  new  Gospel 
was  coincident  with  a  formidable  peasant  war  which  took 
place  in  Salzburg,  Styria,  and  Tyrol.  At  a  meeting  of  the  people 
which  was  held  about  this  time  at  Meran  a  manifesto  was  drawn 
up  which  astonishes  us  even  now  by  its  courage.  "  In  Tyrol," 
it  says,  "there  shall  in  future  be  but  one  law,  and  that  the  law 
of  the  land;  there  shall  be  no  Roman  law,  foreign  and  un- 
intelligible to  the  people.  The  government  sitting  at  Inns- 
bruck shall  be  composed  only  of  native  officials  " — the  latter 
clause  was  especially  aimed  at  the  Spaniards  whom  Ferdinand 
had  brought  with  him. — "  There  shall  be  no  respect  of  persons 
before  the  courts  of  justice.  Bishops,  monasteries,  and 
begging  friars  shall  be  suppressed.  Priests  shall  not  hold 
more  than  one  living.  The  surplus  of  the  revenues  of  the 
Church  shall  be  divided  among  the  poor.  The  estates  of  the 
clergy  shall  be  secularized.  The  revenues  of  the  monasteries 
shall  be  collected  by  agents  of  the  king  and  employed  for  the 
needs  of  the  land.  The  king  may  choose  his  financial  agents, 
but  all  judges  shall  be  chosen  and  dismissed  by  the  people. 

s 


258  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

Fishing  and  hunting  shall  be  free  to  every  one.  The  great 
trading  companies  shall  be  dissolved,  that  so  the  price  of  goods 
may  be  lowered.  All  custom-houses,  except  those  belonging 
to  the  crown,  shall  be  suppressed;  all  seigneurial  dues  and 
enforced  labour  shall  also  be  suppressed,  and  uniformity  of 
weight  and  coinage  shall  be  decreed."  The  peasants  took 
great  pains  to  explain  that  they  fought  against  the  privileged 
classes,  and  not  against  their  sovereign.  Ferdinand  was  obliged 
to  yield  to  most  of  their  demands  ;  he  granted  pardon  to  the 
insurgents,  and  ordered  the  execution  of  those  clauses  in  the 
articles  of  Meran  which  did  not  affect  Church  property. 

In  other  parts  of  the  Hereditary  Provinces  the  Reforma- 
tion made  rapid  progress;  as  early  as  the  year  1520  it  found 
ardent  disciples  in  Austria  proper,  and  thirty  years  later  it  was 
not  thought  safe  to  hold  the  procession  of  Corpus  Christi  in 
Vienna.  Two  hundred  parishes  had  no  priest ;  two  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  had  become  Protestant.  The  same  progress 
was  made  in  Styria,  and  in  1552  the  procession  of  Corpus 
Christi  was  suppressed  at  Gratz.  Among  the  Slovenes  in 
Carniola  one  result  of  the  Reformation  was  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  national  language,  several  theological  works  being 
[printed  at  Tubingen  in  the  Slav  tongue,  under  the  direction 
of  Primus  Truber,  who  also  undertook  the  translation  of  the 
Bible.  The  new  doctrines  spread  as  far  as  Trieste  and 
(iorica,  while  the  Anabaptists  almost  succeeded  in  causing 
a  fresh  revolt  among  the  peasants  of  the  Tyrol.  The  diets 
on  several  occasions  gave  expression  to  the  need  for  liberty  of 
conscience  which  troubled  the  people  ;  and  even  Ferdinand, 
who  had  begun  by  forbidding  the  reading  of  Luther's  Bible, 
was  obliged  in  the  end  to  allow  communion  under  both  kinds. 

To  put  down  the  Reformation  was  the  special  aim  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus ;  for  that  it  had  been  founded,  and  it  was  not 
long  before  it  made  its  way  into  Austrian  land,  the  Jesuits 
settling  themselves  in  Vienna  in  1552,  in  the  Tyrol  in  1560, 
and  in  Styria  in  1564.  In  1547,  Ferdinand  established  the 
censorship  of  the  press  in  his  dominions.     During  his  reign, 


THE  JESUITS  IN  AUSTRIA.  259 

the  famous  Council  of  Trent  (1545-1563)  took  place  in 
Tyrol,  and  the  title  of  Protector  of  the  council  was  bestowed 
on  him  as  its  temporal  defender.  His  lands  were  several 
times  ravaged  by  the  Turks,  Vienna  being  besieged  by  them 
in  1529  ;  and  thirty  years  later,  Carniola  suffered  greatly  from 
them.  In  the  midst  of  all  these  trials,  Ferdinand  had  at 
any  rate  the  consolation  of  seeing  his  son  Maximilian  chosen 
king  of  the  Romans,  and  of  having  him  crowned  king  of 
Bohemia  and  Hungary.  The  law  of  primogeniture  had  never 
yet  been  strictly  carried  out  by  the  house  of  Austria,  and 
Ferdinand  divided  the  hereditary  states  among  his  three  sons, 
Maximilian  H.  taking  Austria;  Ferdinand,  Tyrol;  and 
Charles,  Styria,  Carinthia,  and  Carniola.  These  collateral 
branches  did  not  come  to  an  end  for  a  century,  when  they 
were  united  anew  under  Leopold  I.  in  1665. 

The  character  of  Ferdinand  I.  has  been  thought  worthy 
of  much  praise  ;  he  had  received  a  careful  education,  and  was 
a  thorough  master  of  the  Spanish,  French,  and  German 
languages,  and  he  cared  for  men  of  literature  and  science- 
He  was  no  fanatic,  though  he  was  a  sincere  Catholic,  and  he 
might  have  proved  a  good  ruler  for  Austria  if  it  had  stood  by 
itself  But  he  understood  nothing  of  the  constitutions  of 
Bohemia  and  Hungary,  and,  believing  as  he  did  in  absolutism, 
proved  but  a  very  indifferent  king  for  these  countries.  In 
Bohemia  especially  his  memory  is  detested.  From  his  reign 
dates  the  first  institution  common  to  the  whole  group  of 
states,  the  High  Council  of  War,  but  in  truth,  when  Hungary, 
Bohemia,  and  Austria  chose  the  same  sovereign,  it  was  less 
a  union  than  a  defensive  alliance  that  they  sought. 

Maximilian  II.  (1564-1576). 

Maximilian  II.  was  a  liberal  and  tolerant  prince  for  the  age 
in  which  he  lived.  Wolfgang  Schiefer  (Severus),  who  was  a 
wise  and  enlightened  man,  had  been  his  preceptor,  and  Schiefer 
was  secretly  attached  to  the  doctrines  of  Protestantism.  Fer- 
dinand dismissed  him  from  his  office  as  soon  as  he  discovered 


260  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  feebleness  of  his  orthodoxy;  but  Collatin,  who  replaced 
him,  was  also  far  from  being  a  fervent  Catholic,  and  it  was  in 
order  to  correct  whatever  harm  might  have  been  done  by  these 
two  men,  that  Ferdinand  sent  his  son  to  iinish  his  education  in 
Spain.  He  had  even  some  thoughts  of  excluding  him  from 
the  succession,  and  it  was  owing  to  his  distrust  of  Maximilian 
that  he  eventually  divided  his  dominions  among  Maximilian, 
Ferdinand,  and  Charles.  The  three  princes  were  not  equally 
tolerant  in  their  several  states. 

Maximilian  showed  himself  extremely  liberal  towards  the 
Reformation.  He  corresponded  himself  with  Melancthon,  even 
kept  a  Lutheran  preacher  at  his  court,  and  more  than  once 
roused  the  suspicions  of  the  court  of  Rome.  At  the  time  of 
the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  he  wrote,  "  It  is  with  deep 
regret  that  I  have  learned  that  my  son-in-law,^  the  king  of 
France,  has  allowed  himself  to  be  dragged  through  this  sha^ne- 
f id  bath  of  blood.  I  wish  to  God  he  had  consulted  me  on  the 
subject  1  He  never  would  have  acted  thus  with  my  con- 
sent. .  .  .  Religious  matters  ought  never  to  be  settled  by  the 
sword.  No  good  man,  who  fears  God  and  loves  peace,  believes 
they  can  be  so  settled.  ...  If  Spain  and  France  carry  out 
their  intentions,  they  will  have  to  answer  for  it  before  God.  As 
for  me,  I  wish  to  live  like  a  good  man  and  a  Christian,  and  so 
doing,  I  care  little  for  this  poor  world."  He  refused,  however, 
to  send  the  Jesuits  out  of  the  country  when  the  Austrian 
estates  begged  for  their  expulsion,  and  would  not  allow  his 
nobles  to  celebrate  the  reformed  rites  on  their  estates,  nor 
grant  to  the  towns  liberty  of  conscience.  He  had  married  his 
cousin  Mary,  the  daughter  of  Charles  V.,  and  she,  true  to 
her  Spanish  blood,  brought  up  their  children  with  a  horror 
of  heresy.  Two  of  his  sons,  Rudolf  and  Mathias,  reigned 
after  him.  The  elder,  Rudolf,  he  had  had  crowned  during 
his  own  lifetime;  as  king  of  Hungary  in  1572,  and  as  king  of 
Bohemia  in  1575.     On  the  extinction  of  the  Jagellon  dynasty 

*  Charles  IX.  had  married   Elizabeth  of  Austria,  Maximilian's  second 
daughter. 


RUDOLF  II.  261 

in  1572,  some  of  the  Polish  nobles  chose  Maximilian  to  be 
their  king,  but  the  majority  preferred  Stephen  Batory,  of 
Transylvania. 

Riidolf  II.  (15  7  6-1 6 11) — The  Counter-Refor7nation  in  the 
Austrian  States. 

Rudolf  II.  imitated  rather  the  narrow  devotion  of  his 
mother  than  the  tolerance  of  his  father.  In  several  respects 
he  resembled  Philip  II.,  possessing  the  fierce  fanaticism  and 
the  morose  temper  of  that  prince,  but  not  his  strength  of  will. 
He  is  celebrated  for  his  love  for  the  occult  sciences  and  for  his 
obstinate  indolence.  Prague,  which  owes  to  him  much  of  its 
splendour,  was  his  usual  place  of  residence  ;  he  lived  there 
shut  up  in  his  castle  of  Hradcany,  surrounded  by  astronomers 
and  astrologers.  He  sent  for  Kepler,  who  prepared  for  him 
the  astronomical  tables  called  the  Rudolphine  tables,  and  for 
Tycho  Brahe,  who  united  with  his  love  of  real  knowledge 
a  leaning  towards  alchemy  and  astrology.  The  dangerous 
fancies  of  the  weak  emperor  ended  by  disturbing  his  reason, 
and  his  brothers  decided  to  proclaim  one  of  themselves, 
Mathias,  as  the  head  of  the  house.  Mathias  took  up  arms 
against  Rudolf,  and  in  1608  obtained  the  title  of  governor  of 
Austria,  Moravia,  and  Hungary. 

In  the  hereditary  provinces  the  reign  of  Rudolf  was 
signalized  by  a  peasant  war,  caused  by  agrarian  difficulties 
and  an  earnest  desire  among  the  people  for  liberty  of  conscience. 
During  the  whole  of  this  period  we  find  agrarian  and  religious 
troubles  constantly  coincident.  Bishop  Khlesl,  who  was  the 
administrator  of  the  two  dioceses  of  Vienna  and  Wiener- 
Neustadt,  worked  hard  to  stop  the  progress  of  reform,  and  was 
assisted  to  the  utmost  of  their  power  by  the  Jesuits.  The 
fierce  couplet  addressed  to  the  emperor  in  1581  by  one  of  the 
Jesuits  has  been  often  quoted  : 

"  Utere  jure  tuo,  Csesar,  servosque  Lutheri 
Ense,  rota,  ponto,  funibus,  igne  neca." 

The  archduke  Charles  was  no  less  in  earnest  for  the  restora- 


262  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

tion  of  Catholicism  in  Styria.  He  settled  the  Jesuits  in  Gratz, 
and  in  1572  the  religious  processions,  which  had  been  sus- 
pended for  twenty  years,  were  resumed.  The  Lutheran  nobles 
])rotested  in  vain,  and  the  worship  of  Mary,  which  was  so 
zealously  taught  by  the  Jesuits,  became  the  rallying-point  of 
the  anti-reformers.  A  Catholic  printing-press  was  set  up  at 
(jratz,  and  a  university  for  Jesuit  instruction,  which  has  con- 
tinued to  the  present  time,  was  founded  in  1586.  The  nobles 
were  obliged,  under  pain  of  disgrace  and  even  punishment 
(schwerer  Ungnad  und  Straf),  to  send  their  children  to  this 
university,  and  no  one  was  allowed  to  attend  the  heretical 
schools  of  Germany.  But  Charles  was  incessantly  harassed 
by  the  complaints  of  citizens,  peasants,  and  diets,  and  died  in 
the  end  of  weariness  and  vexation  (1591).  His  work  was 
worthily  carried  on  by  his  successor  Ferdinand  (1591-1637), 
who  afterwards  became  emperor  and  king  of  Bohemia  and  of 
Hungary.  When  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Loretto  this  prince  had 
vowed  to  exterminate  heresy,  and  he  endeavoured  to  keep  his 
word.  He  began  by  driving  all  the  Protestant  preachers  from 
Gratz  and  other  towns;  he  then  took  possession  of  their 
schools,  burnt  their  books,  and  forced  the  members  of  the 
reformed  Churches  to  sell  their  property  and  quit  the  country. 
The  Capuchins  were  sent  for  to  help  the  Jesuits  to  bring  back 
tlie  people  to  the  right  way,  and  liberty  of  conscience  was 
stifled  for  long  years  to  come.  Later  on,  Ferdinand  had  an 
opportunity  of  applying  in  Bohemia,  and  on  a  far  larger  scale, 
the  methods  of  conversion  which  he  had  first  tried  in  Styria. 

In  Austria,  when  the  archduke  Mathias  was  made  governor, 
he  was  obliged  to  listen  to  the  demands  of  the  estates,  and  to 
renew  the  arrangements  made  by  Maximilian  H.,  which  granted 
liberty  of  conscience  on  all  seigneurial  estates,  but  not  in  the 
towns. 

In  Tyrol  also  the  archduke  Ferdinand — who  must  not  be 
confounded  with  the  emperor  Ferdinand  II. — laboured  no  less 
actively  than  his  namesake  for  the  restoration  of  Catholicism. 
This  province  owed  to  him   a  code  of  laws  {Landesord?iung) 


MATHIAS.  263 

which  remained  in  vigour  for  more  than  two  centuries,  a  better 
system  of  coinage,  and  wise  measures  for  the  development  of 
trade  and  industry.  He  founded  the  famous  Ambras  Museum 
in  the  castle  of  Ambras,  near  Innsbruck,  which  was  afterwards 
carried  to  Vienna,  and  bears  witness  to  the  knightly  and 
artistic  tastes  of  this  enlightened  prince. 

Mathias  (1612-1619) — Ferdinand II.  (1619-1637) — Ferdinand 
III.  (1637-1657) — InflueTue  of  the  fcsuits. 

Rudolf  never  married,  and  he  was  succeeded  in  Austria, 
Bohemia,  and  Hungary  by  Mathias,  whose  activity  formed  a 
striking  contrast  with  the  indolence  of  his  brother.  His  chief 
minister  and  confidant  was  Cardinal  Khlesl,  bishop  of  Vienna, 
who  had  carried  on  the  counter-reformation  in  the  Austrian 
dominions  with  so  much  vigour.  The  whole  interest  of  the 
reign  of  Mathias  is  centred  in  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  and  the 
part  he  acted  there  enables  us  to  measure  the  poverty  of  a 
character  which  never  rose  to  the  height  of  its  ambition.  It 
is  far  easier  to  covet  power  than  to  exercise  it  well.  Matliias 
had  no  direct  heir,  and  his  first  and  principal  care  was  to 
secure  his  inheritance  to  his  family  and  to  arrange  the  order  of 
succession.  To  this  end,  he  chose  his  cousin  Ferdinand,  of 
the  Styrian  line,  as  his  heir,  and  obtained  a  deed  of  renuncia- 
tion from  his  brothers  Maximilian  and  Albert,  and  even  from 
the  king  of  Spain.  Thus  we  see  that  even  then  the  succession 
to  two  great  kingdoms  was  nothing  more  to  the  Habsburgs 
than  a  family  affair.  It  is  true,  however,  that  the  Bohemian 
and  Hungarian  estates  ratified  this  arrangement,  and  Ferdinand 
was  crowned  king  of  Hungary  on  the  8th  of  June,  1617,  and 
king  of  Bohemia  on  the  i6th  of  May  of  the  following  year. 

The  ease  with  which  these  transactions  were  accepted  by 
the  two  kingdoms  may  seem  astounding ;  but  we  must  not 
forget  that  both  Bohemia  and  Hungary  were  essentially  aristo- 
cratic countries,  and  that  their  nobles  would  rather  obey  a 
foreigner  than  see  one  of  their  own  number,  even  if  he  were 
a  Mathias   Corvinus   or  a   Podiebrad,  raised    to    the   throne. 


264  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Besides,  they  were  constantly  in  dread  of  a  Mussulman  invasion, 
and  instinctively  felt  it  their  interest  to  obtain  the  support  of 
a  house  which  was  already  powerful  in  itself,  and  could,  at 
need,  secure  to  its  subjects  the  help  of  the  whole  of  Germany. 
Unfortunately,  the  house  of  Austria  adopted  too  completely 
the  character  of  defender  of  Christendom,  and  identified  itself 
entirely  with  Catholic  intolerance.  The  reformed  Churches, 
whatever  their  origin,  whether  they  followed  Hus,  Luther,  or 
Calvin,  were  all  enemies  as  hateful  to  the  Habsburgs  as  Turks, 
and  much  more  easy  to  fight ;  and  confounding  as  they  did 
the  spirit  of  independence  with  that  of  heresy,  they  stifled 
liberty,  and  made  absolutism  the  sole  basis  of  their  policy. 

Ferdinand  II.  {161 9-163 7),  a  fervent  Catholic  and  a  despotic 
ruler,  was  the  first  representative  of  those  typical  Austrian 
monarchs  who  ruled  Austria,  with  the  one  single  exception  of 
Joseph  II.,  from  161 9  down  to  the  middle  of  the  present 
century.  He  had  been  educated  at  Ingoldstadt,  under  the 
care  of  the  Jesuits  and  of  his  uncle,  the  pious  William  of 
Bavaria ;  he  had  more  than  once  expressed  a  wish  to  become 
a  Jesuit,  and  we  have  already  seen  how  he  carried  the  maxims 
of  his  teachers  into  practice  in  his  government  of  Styria. 
He  found  a  far  larger  field  for  his  religious  zeal  in  Bohemia 
and  Hungary.  In  order  to  obtain  the  funds  needed  for  his 
war  against  the  Chekhs,  Ferdinand  pledged  Upper  Austria  to 
Bavaria,  and  Herbersdorf,  the  Bavarian  governor,  had  recourse 
to  the  most  violent  measures  in  order  to  restore  that  province 
to  Catholicism.  Those  peasants  who  were  attached  to  the 
reformed  religion  rose  in  arms.  According  to  a  song  of  the 
time,  they  wished  to  become  their  own  masters,  and  to  govern 
their  country  as  the  Swiss  did.  The  hatter  Fadinger,  who  was 
an  old  soldier,  was  their  leader,  and  showed  real  military  talent 
in  the  unequal  struggle.  He  took  the  title  of  captain-in-chief 
of  the  Christian  army,  and  was  followed  by  seventy  thou- 
sand men,  whom  he  organized  and  furnished  with  artillery  ; 
but  he  was  wounded  at  the  siege  of  Linz,  and  died  shortly  after- 
wards (1627).     His  successor  as  leader  of  the  insurgents  was  a 


FERDINAND  II.  265 

knight  named  Wiellinger,  who  was  defeated  by  General  Pappen- 
heim,one  of  the  heroes  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  The  peasant 
army  was  gradually  broken  up,  and  Wiellinger  and  the  other  chief 
leaders  perished  on  the  scaffold.  Four  weeks  were  granted 
to  the  rebels  in  which  to  become  good  Catholics ;  but,  of 
course,  many  of  the  conversions  were  insincere,  and  in  a  latent 
form  the  spirit  of  the  Reformation  lingered  on  in  most  of  the 
parishes. 

Ferdinand's  reign  was  a  golden  age  for  the  Catholic 
Church.  He  founded  sixteen  colleges  for  the  Jesuits,  be- 
sides convents  for  the  Barnabites,  Capuchins,  Camaldulensians, 
Augustines,  and  Benedictines,  and  he  increased  the  estates  of 
the  clergy.  He  was  outwardly  a  strict  observer  of  the  Christian 
virtues,  and  'loved  to  practise  towards  the  poor  that  charity 
full  of  ostentation  which  is  so  easily  reconciled  with  cruelty 
towards  heretics.  His  second  son,  Leopold  William,  was 
destined  for  the  Church,  and  by  the  age  of  eleven  already 
possessed  two  bishoprics  and  four  abbeys. 

Ferdinand  had  reunited  all  the  hereditary  provinces,  but 
in  1623  he  ceded  Western  Austria  and  Tyrol  to  his  brother 
Leopold,  who  married  the  beautiful  and  intelligent  Claudia  de 
Medici.  In  1665,  this  province  returned  to  Leopold  I.,  and, 
excepting  during  the  wars  with  Napoleon,  has  never  again 
been  separated  from  Austria. 

Ferdinand  H.  left  the  continuation  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War 
as  a  legacy  to  his  successor,  Ferdinand  IH.  (1637-165 7).  This 
war  struck  a  rude  blow  at  the  prestige  of  the  house  of  Austria 
in  Germany.  There  is  no  need  to  relate  here  its  varying 
incidents;  we  shall  see  further  on  how  it  affected  Bohemia 
and  Hungary.  The  famous  pamphlet  of  Hippolytus  a  Lapide 
(Philip  Chemnitz)  on  the  position  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
appeared  during  this  time.  According  to  it,  the  sole  means 
of  saving  the  empire  from  certain  ruin  was  the  exclusion  ot 
Austria  from  Germany.  It  argued  that  Austria  had  always 
exercised  a  fatal  influence,  having  grown  powerful  at  the 
expense  of  the  empire ;  she  ought  now  to  be  separated  from 


266  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

it,  and  so  leave  Germany  to  form  a  federation  under  the 
protection  of  France  and  Sweden,  etc.  The  peace  of  West- 
phaUa,  while  it  secured  liberty  of  conscience  for  Germany, 
contained  no  stipulations  in  favour  "of  the  subjects  of  Austria, 
except  for  those  in  Silesia.  The  rapid  spread  of  the  Reforma- 
tion in  this  province,  which  had  formerly  been  so  hostile  to 
the  Hussites,  was  in  later  years  to  make  its  separation  from 
Bohemia  and  assimilation  with  the  Prussian  monarchy  much 
more  easy.  By  the  treaty  of  Miinster  Ferdinand  was  obliged 
to  cede  his  Alsatian  possessions  to  the  king  of  France. 

During  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  III.  the  counter-reformation 
in  the  Hereditary  States  was  continued  with  greater  energy 
than  ever.  Upper  Austria,  however,  showed  remarkable- 
tenacity  in  its  attachment  to  the  reformed  doctrihe,  and  with- 
stood all  the  efforts  of  this  sovereign.  In  1645,  when  Vienna 
was  threatened  by  the  Swedes,  the  malcontents  sent  emissaries 
to  them  to  concert  a  common  course  of  action,  and  some 
noble  families  even  sold  their  estates  and  emigrated  in  order 
to  be  able  to  keep  the  faith  they  had  chosen.  An  insurrection 
among  the  peasants  was  severely  repressed.  And  yet  Ferdi- 
nand was  neither  cruel  nor  Avanting  in  intelligence  ;  Guistiniani, 
the  Venetian  ambassador,  speaks  of  him  in  his  correspondence 
as  a  king  who  was  enlightened,  gentle,  and  moderate  in  his 
views  ;  he  simply  carried  out  the  ideas  of  his  time  and  the 
traditions  of  his  family,  and  did  this  without  exaggeration. 
During  his  lifetime  he  saw  his  eldest  son,  Ferdinand,  elected 
king  of  Hungary  and  crowned  king  of  Bohemia  ;  the  early 
death  of  this  prince,  however,  left  both  these  crowns  to  his 
brother,  Leopold  I.,  whose  long  reign  occupied  the  whole  of 
the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

Leopold  I.  (1657-1705) — Siege  of  Vietina — Sobieski  (1683). 

At  the  time  of  Leopold's  accession  Austria  was  a  much 
smaller  state  than  it  is  in  our  own  time.  Galicia  still  belonged 
to  Poland  ;  the  shores  of  Istria  and  Dalmatia,  and  the  islands 
from  Fiume  to  Cattaro,  to  the  Venetian  republic ;  Brixen  and 


LEOPOLD   /.  267 

Trent  were  only  attached  to  Tyrol  by  a  very  loose  tie,  and 
Tyrol  itself  belonged  to  the  junior  branch  of  the  family. 
Scarcely  the  third  of  a  divided  Hungary  obeyed  the  king, 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  Bohemia  still  included  the  greater  part 
of  Silesia  which  is  now  Prussian,  with  the  principalities  of 
Breslau,  Oppeln,  and  Ratibor.  Leopold  acquired  Tyrol  in 
1665,  when  the  last  prince  of  the  younger  line  died,  and  at  the 
same  time  he  inherited  a  million  of  florins,  which  was  a  large 
sum  in  those  days.  The  victories  of  prince  Eugene  secured 
for  him  almost  the  whole  of  Hungary,  Croatia,  Slavonia,  and 
Transylvania.  The  Austrian  states,  which  at  the  accession  of 
Leopold  had  contained  only  6800  square  miles,  on  his  death 
contained  9100. 

This  prince,  who  added  a  third  to  the  inheritance  of  his 
forefathers,  was  not,  however,  of  a  warlike  temperament,  and 
never  commanded  an  army.  He  had  been  educated  by  the 
Jesuits  MuUer  and  Neidhard  (Nitardi),  and  was  to  have  been 
a  priest.  His  father  used  to  say  that  he  would  make  an 
excellent  bishop,  and  he  exhibited  on  the  throne  the  virtues 
and  the  faults  of  the  profession  to  which  he  was  to  have 
belonged, — great  purity  of  life,  extreme  timidity,  and  a  spirit  of 
inexorable  intolerance.  He  had  absolutely  no  decision  of 
character,  and  followed  the  lead  of  councillors  of  the  most 
opposite  kinds.  Among  these  advisers  we  find  Auersperg, 
Zinzendorf,  Schwarzenberg,  Hocher,  Montecuculli  \  his  con- 
fessor, the  Jesuit  Muller,  whom  Pufifendorf  calls  "  a  pedant  of 
the  schools  who  knew  nothing  of  business ; "  the  Capuchin 
Sinelli,  the  Jesuit  Menegatti,  and  the  Spanish  Franciscan 
Spinola,  who  dreamed  of  a  united  Church  which  was  to 
include  Protestants  and  Catholics.  The  curious  accounts  of 
the  Venetian  ambassadors  at  the  court  of  Leopold  prove  that 
the  influence  of  these  Churchmen  far  exceeded  its  due  limits. 
Leopold  was  passionately  attached  to  the  Jesuits,  and  hoped, 
like  Louis  XIV.,  to  make  the  Catholic  faith  triumphant 
in  his  country;  but  he  lived  in  his  castle  at  Vienna  a  solemn, 
monotonous,   and   melancholy   life,  which  was  very  different 


268  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

from  that  of  the  Sun-king.  Spanish  etiquette  weighed  heavily 
on  the  Viennese  court,  which  was  almost  as  dull  as  that 
of  the  Escurial.  Music,  painting,  literature,  the  study  and 
practice  of  some  of  the  mechanical  arts,  alchemy,  and  astrology 
were  the  pastimes  of  his  sleepy  life.  More  than  once  a 
placard  was  found  on  the  gates  of  the  palace  on  which  was 
written,  "  Leopolde,  sis  Caesar  et  tio?i  nmsicus^  sis  Caesar  et  non 
/esiiiia.'^  The  sternness  of  the  prince  did  not  prevent  his 
manner  to  the  poor  and  to  those  whom  he  received  in  audience 
showing  a  certain  paternal  kindness  and  good-nature ;  but  he 
punished  all  who  ventured  to  attack  his  kingly  power  with 
merciless  cruelty.  "  In  Leopold,"  says  Sayous,  "  were  united 
and  intensified  all  the  faults  of  his  ancestors,  while  he  had 
none  of  their  greatness  ;  the  haughty  Austrian  lip,  which  was 
a  real  deformity  in  him,  made  him  look  like  a  caricature 
of  Charles  V."  His  bust  in  the  Ambras  Collection  in 
Vienna  represents  a  face  of  repulsive  ugliness  which  rouses 
strong  feelings  of  dislike.  Leopold  founded  two  universities, 
one  at  Breslau,  and  another  at  Innsbruck.  He  reformed  the 
courts  of  justice,  replaced  in  them  the  use  of  the  Latin 
language  by  German,  and  established  a  regular  police  in 
Vienna. 

If  we  leave  on  one  side  the  part  played  by  Leopold  in 
European  affairs  as  emperor,  his  reign  in  Austria  presents  but 
one  event  of  importance,  the  siege  of  Vienna  by  the  Turks. 
In  1683,  the  grand  vizier,  Kara  Mustapha,  with  the  aid  of 
the  Hungarians,  marched  against  Vienna.  The  emperor, 
with  his  family  and  court  and  the  greater  number  of  the 
nobles,  immediately  quitted  the  town  and  retired  to  Linz. 
Abandoned  by  the  sovereign,  with  dismantled  fortifications 
and  a  feeble  garrison,  it  seemed  impossible  that  the  capital 
should  hold  out  long;  but  duke  Charles  of  Lorraine  and 
count  Stahrenberg  put  it  into  a  state  of  defence,  and  the  in- 
habitants displayed  heroic  courage,  students,  merchants,  and 
citizens  turning  soldiers,  and  themselves  burning  the  outskirts 
of  the  city  lest  they  should  be  used  as  shelter  by  the  enemy. 


SIEGE   OF   VIENNA.  269 

The  outer  fortifications  were  soon  in  the  possession  of  the 
Turks,  who  formed  a  magnificent  camp  before  the  town,  and 
began  a  regular  siege,  attempting  to  take  it  by  assault  no  less 
than  eighteen  times.  Soon  famine  attacked  the  place.  Happily 
the  pope,  Innocent  XL,  terrified  at  the  danger  to  Christendom, 
had  persuaded  John  Sobieski,  king  of  Poland,  to  lend  his  aid 
to  the  emperor,  and,  thanks  to  the  efforts  of  the  Holy  See,  a 
formal  alliance  between  the  courts  of  Vienna  and  Cracow  had 
been  concluded.  Leopold  had  undertaken  to  set  on  foot  an 
army  of  sixty  thousand  men,  and  Sobieski  forty  thousand  ; 
and  both  parties  were  to  help  each  other  directly  either  of  their 
two  capitals  was  attacked.  All  Christian  princes,  amongst  them 
even  the  czar  of  Russia,  were  to  be  invited  to  join  this  alliance. 
Sobieski  was  faithful  to  his  engagements.  The  victor  of  Chocim 
(1673)  had  long  been  celebrated  for  his  success  and  his  heroic 
courage,  and  as  soon  as  he  heard  of  the  peril  of  Vienna,  he  set 
out  at  once,  and  arrived  thereby  forced  marches  on  the  7th  of 
September.  There  he  met  the  armies  of  the  duke  of  Lorraine, 
the  emperor's  brother-in-law,  and  the  electors  of  Bavaria  and 
Saxony,  who  had  come  to  the  help  of  the  besieged  city.  The 
total  number  of  the  three  armies  was  about  eighty  thousand 
men,  and  among  their  leaders  we  find  the  names  of  some  of  the 
heroes  of  Poland,  the  Czarniecki,  Potocki,  Zamojski,  and  the 
Leszczynski.  On  the  12th  of  September,  they  appeared  on  the 
heights  of  Kahlenberg.  The  battle  that  followed  was  terrible. 
The  pachas  of  Aleppo  and  of  Silistria  perished  in  the  fight. 
"God  is  against  us,"  cried  Selim  Gherai,  the  khan  of  the 
Crimea.  In  the  end,  the  Turkish  camp  was  captured,  and 
Kara  Mustapha  was  forced  to  fly.  The  Turks  lost  twenty 
thousand  men,  while  only  four  thousand  Christians  were  left 
on  the  field  of  battle.  Sobieski  sent  the  golden  stirrup  of  the 
grand  vizier  to  the  queen  of  Poland,  and  his  standard  to  pope 
Innocent  XL 

The  next  day  the  conqueror  entered  Vienna,  and  the 
populace,  who  had  seen  the  departure  of  the  emperor  with 
indignation,   received   their  deliverer  with    enthusiasm.      On 


2/0  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-ITUNGARY. 

the  15  th  of  September  Leopold  returned  to  the  capital,  and 
at  once  gave  proofs  of  the  utter  meanness  of  his  character. 
More  jealous  of  the  success  of  Sobieski  than  grateful  for  his 
help,  he  first  tried  to  avoid  an  interview  with  him,  and  then, 
finding  that  impossible,  set  to  work  to  contrive  how  best  to 
humiliate  his  glorious  rival.  He  lost  time  in  trying  to  find  out 
how  an  emperor  ought  to  receive  the  elected  king  of  the  Polish 
republic.  "  With  open  arms,"  the  duke  of  Lorraine  had  an- 
swered ;  but  to  Leopold  the  great  question  was  whether  Sobieski 
ought  to  stand  on  his  right  hand  or  his  left.  The  interview 
at  length  took  place  in  a  field,  and  it  was  decided  that  the  two 
sovereigns  should  stand  face  to  face.  After  the  exchange  of 
a  few  commonplace  sentences,  Sobieski  rode  off,  saying  that, 
if  it  pleased  the  emperor,  he  would  direct  his  generals  to  show 
him  the  Polish  troops.  In  his  letter  to  Maria  Kazimira,  his 
wife,  Sobieski  has  described  eloquently  and  bitterly  the  pain- 
ful impression  made  upon  him  by  the  ingratitude  of  Austria. 
He  writes  :  "  The  palatine  of  Red  Russia  displayed  our  army 
before  the  emperor,  but  our  people  have  been  much  annoyed, 
and  have  loudly  complained,  because  the  emperor  never 
deigned  to  thank  them,  not  even  by  a  bow,  for  all  their 
trouble  and  privations.  They  give  us  neither  forage  nor  pro- 
visions ;  our  sick  are  lying  on  dunghills,  and  our  many 
wounded  cannot  obtain  a  single  boat  to  carry  them  down  to 
Pressburg,  where  I  could  more  easily  provide  for  them  at  my  • 
own  cost.  They  will  not  bury  our  dead  in  their  cemeteries,  not 
even  the  superior  officers.  .  .  .  They  steal  our  baggage ;  they 
carry  off  those  of  our  horses  which  are  in  the  rear.  But  for 
the  oats  which  we  found  in  the  Turkish  camp,  all  our  horses 
must  have  perished.  We  should  be  less  miserable  if  they 
would  have  the  charity  to  build  us  a  bridge  across  the  Danube, 
and  let  us  go  to  live  in  the  land  of  our  enemies.  There  we 
should  find  something  to  keep  us  alive.  But  these  Viennese 
gentlemen  put  off  everything  till  to-morrow,  and  now  that  they 
are  saved,  they  give  themselves  up  to  those  excesses  for  which 
God  had  righteously  punished  them.     Many  of  our  men,  find- 


SOB  IE  SKI.  271 

ing  that  they  were  dying  of  hunger  in  the  country,  hurried  to 
the  town  to  find  food ;  but  the  commandant  of  Vienna  had 
given  orders  that  they  should  not  be  allowed  to  enter,  and  that 
they  should  be  fired  upon.  After  this  great  battle,  in  which  we 
have  lost  so  many  members  of  our  most  illustrious  families,  we 
are  treated  like  plague-stricken  men,  whom  every  one  must 
avoid.  There  remains  nothing  for  us  now  but  to  groan  as  we 
watch  our  army  perish,  not  by  the  blows  of  our  enemy,  but 
from  the  faults  of  those  who  owe  everything  to  us.  So  I  shall 
march  away  to-day,  perhaps  to  meet  a  greater  famine  than 
I  leave ;  but  I  wish  to  get  far  away  from  the  town  of  Vienna, 
where  they  fire  on  my  men.  We  are  here  by  the  waters  of  the 
Danube,  as  the  Israelites  were  in  old  times  by  the  waters 
of  the  Euphrates.  We  weep  for  the  loss  of  our  horses,  for  the 
ingratitude  of  those  whom  we  have  saved,  and  for  the  many 
chances  of  victory  which  we  have  lost.  Every  one  is  out  of 
heart,  and  we  even  go  so  far  as  to  regret  that  we  ever  helped 
the  emperor."  ^ 

After  leaving  Vienna,  Sobieski  pursued  the  Turks  into 
Hungar}^,  and  captured  Esztergom  (Gran)  from  them,  and  in 
the  month  of  December  he  returned  to  Cracow.  It  is  difficult 
to  understand  why  historians  have  named  Leopold  "  the  Great," 
when  his  character  so  little  justifies  the  title. 

Austria  under  Leopold  I. — Army — Finances. 

Before  going  on  to  the  reign  of  Joseph  I.,  it  will  be  well 
to  study  the  general  organization  .of  the  Austrian  provinces 
under  Leopold,  leaving  on  one  side  everything  which  concerns 
the  empire  and  also  the  internal  government  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary.  At  this  time  all  political  and  judicial  matters  were 
settled  by  the  Council  of  State  or  Secret  Conference,  matters 

'  Two  centuries  later,  when  the  emperor  Nicholas  had  saved  the  lioiise 
of  Austria  from  a  revolted  Hungary,  he  asked  the  poet  Rzewuski,  "Who 
was  the  most  stupid  king  of  Poland  Ijefore  me  ?  "  When  the  poet  hesitated 
to  answer,  "  Well,"  said  the  czar,  "  it  was  Sobieski,  for  only  he  and  I 
have  helped  Austria." 


2/2  HISTORY   OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  finance  and  trade  by  the  Court  Chamber  {Hofkanwier), 
and  questions  of -war  by  the  Council  of  War;  but  the  powers  of 
these  various  councils  were  not  defined  with  strict  precision, 
and  there  were  not  as  yet  ministers  entrusted  with  special 
departments.  The  Secret  Conference  never  included  more 
than  twelve  members,  among  whom  the  chief  men  were 
Auersperg,  Lobkovice,  Trautson,  MontecucuUi,  Harrach,  and 
Kinsky.  This  council  assisted  the  emperor  in  all  important 
matters.  There  was  no  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  and  all 
negociations  were  carried  on  with  a  slowness  which  had  become 
proverbial.  "  Vienna  vult  expectant'  said  a  proverb  which 
was  widely  spread  in  the  diplomatic  world.  No  one  in  the 
council  could  ever  boast  of  having  as  much  influence  with  the 
emperor  as  any  one  of  his  numerous  confessors. 

The  High  Council  of  War  was  founded  in  1556.  Under 
Leopold  it  was  composed  of  twelve  members,  and  had  amongst 
its  presidents  the  celebrated  general  MontecucuUi,  and  Hermann, 
margrave  of  Baden.  This  institution  did  not,  however,  call 
forth  good  generals  from  among  the  native  Austrians  ;  Monte- 
cucuUi came  from  Modena,  De  Souches  from  France,  while 
the  titles  of  Charles  of  Lorraine  and  Eugene  of  Savoy  show 
their  foreign  origin.  At  the  head  of  the  army  was  a  lieutenant- 
general,  who  was  dependent  on  the  Council  of  War.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  reign  of  Leopold  there  was  no  standing  army ; 
MontecucuUi  was  the  first  who  proposed  that  one  should  be 
organized,  and  although  the  sovereign  did  not  yield  to  his 
wishes,  MontecucuUi  was  able  to  induce  him  not  to  disband 
all  the  troops  after  a  war,  and  to  make  some  effort  to  retain 
the  veterans  in  his  service. 

The  army  on  an  average  was  composed  of  thirty  thousand 
men,  not  including  the  garrisons ;  in  this  number  the  Hun- 
garian and  Croatian  troops  are  not  included.  From  fifty  to 
ninety  thousand  soldiers  were  employed  in  the  wars  against 
Turkey,  but  from  twenty  to  thirty  thousand  of  these  were 
furnished  by  the  German  princes.  From  1680,  the  continu- 
ance of  war  had  for   its   immediate   result  the  permanence 


MILITARY  ORGANIZATION— TAXATION.  273 

of  the  army,  and  its  formation  into  regular  regiments.' 
The  first  infantry  regiment  was  formed  in  1680.  By  1705,  the 
date  of  Leopold's  death,  there  were  twenty  regiments  of 
cuirassiers,  eleven  of  dragoons,  and  thirty-six  of  infantry, 
besides  irregular  troops.  The  infantry  regiments  contained 
from  two  thousand  to  two  thousand  five  hundred  men  ;  the 
cavalry  regiments,  from  five  hundred  to  a  thousand.  Recruiting 
was  carried  on,  as  in  France,  by  means  of  recruiting  officers  and 
sergeants,  who  induced  men  to  become  soldiers  by  offering 
them  money  and  promising  them  booty.  In  case  of  extra- 
ordinary need  the  provincial  diets  voted  special  levies,  and 
vagabonds  and  prisoners  of  war  were  forcibly  enrolled.  Old 
soldiers  married  and  brought  up  their  children  to  their  own 
trade — sometimes  three  generations  might  be  found  fighting 
under  the  same  flag — and  the  armies  were  always  followed  by 
an  immense  number  of  women  and  children. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  a  small  fleet 
was  established  on  the  Danube,  commanded  by  an  admiral 
and  manned  by  sailors  from  Holland  and  the  Baltic.  The 
garrisons  in  time  of  peace  were  very  small.  Vienna  itself  had 
never  more  than  two  thousand  soldiers.  In  Hungary,  besides 
the  national  militia,  the  government  maintained  ten  thousand 
men,  but  these  men  were  badly  fed  and  badly  paid,  and  were 
often  forced  to  pillage  the  enemy's  territory  in  order  to  live. 
Pillage  of  this  kind  had  become  a  custom,  and  the  Turks 
themselves  allowed  that  peace  was  not  violated  so  long  as  the 
frontier  was  not  crossed  by  as  many  as  five  hundred  men  at  a 
time,  and  no  artillery  came  with  them.  Wars  were  still 
organized  extremely  ill ;  supplies  were  never  ready  when  they 
were  needed,  and  all  the  expeditions  against  the  Turks  set  out 
too  late.  Regiments  were  usually  farmed  by  the  colonels  or 
other  officers  to  their  own  profit ;  the  treasury  was  a  bad  pay- 
master, and  the  soldiers'  pay  was  often  six  months  in  arrears. 
This  state  of  things  produced  insubordination,  and  that  again 

'  Compare  the  growth  of  a  standing  army  in  England  during  the  same 
period. 

T 


274  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

provoked  harsh  measures  of  repression.  A  commission  was 
appointed  in  1698  to  remedy  these  abuses;  its  deliberations 
were  numerous,  but  had  little  result.  There  were  also  other  evil 
influences  at  work  on  the  army.  The  nomination  of  officers 
frequently  depended  on  the  king's  confessor ;  there  was  no 
security  for  their  obtaining  technical  instruction,  and  the 
government  was  obliged  to  have  recourse  for  this  purpose  to 
Prussian,  English,  and  French  officers  ;  there  was  no  military 
college,  and  the  care  of  the  sick  and  wounded  was  almost 
entirely  neglected.  In  1696,  a  lottery,  was  established  as  a 
means  of  founding  a  military  hospital ;  and  the  lottery  has 
remained  ever  since  one  of  the  financial  institutions  of  Austria. 
Much  of  this  mismanagement  was  due  to  the  bad  state  of 
the  finances.  The  whole  of  the  ordinary  revenue  from  direct 
taxation  was  made  up  of  the  subsidies  granted  yearly  by  the 
diets,  (in  Hungary,  every  three  or  four  years,)  and  these  sub- 
sidies amounted  almost  always  to  the  same  sum,  so  that  the 
income  from  this  source  never  increased.  Lower  Austria  paid 
on  an  average  about  two  hundred  thousand  florins ;  Upper 
Austria,  one  hundred  thousand ;  Bohemia,  Silesia,  and 
Moravia,  one  million  two  hundred  thousand.  The  only 
extraordinary  subsidies  that  were  ever  granted  were  as  volun- 
tary gifts,  as,  for  instance,  on  the  occasion  of  a  coronation, 
or  as  aid  under  exceptional  circumstances.  The  income 
derived  from  indirect  taxation,  moreover,  was  often  burdened 
with  debts  contracted  towards  the  various  provinces  of  the 
empire.  The  treasury  was,  however,  clever  at  finding  money. 
We  find  taxes  on  billiards,  playing-cards,  and  hair-powder  as 
early  as  1676  ;  later  on,  the  State  had  a  monopoly  of  tobacco 
and  stamped  papers  ;  and,  in  1691,  a  capitation  tax  was  raised 
which  excepted  neither  priests  nor  nobles.  Then  came  the 
lottery  under  a  philanthropic  pretext.  The  whole  revenue  of 
Austria,  Bohemia,  and  Hungary  amounted  to  about  twelve 
million  florins  by  the  end  of  Leopold's  reign.  The  members 
of  the  Hofkannner,  whose  business  it  was  to  watch  over  the 
finances,  were  not  always  remarkable  for  their  honesty,    and 


ADMINISTRATIOy.  275 

Leopold's  thoughtless  generosity  also  helped  to  compromise 
the  revenues  of  the  State. 

Administration — Legislation — Literature. 

For  purposes  of  administration  the  country  was  divided  into 
several  groups.  Lower  Austria,  which  included  the  Austrian 
lands  on  both  sides  of  the  Enns,  Middle  Austria,  Styria, 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  Gorica,  and  Istria ;  Upper  Austria  with 
Tyrol  and  Outer  Austria,  i.e.  the  Austrian  possessions  in  South- 
western Germany  and  Bohemia,  which  included  Silesia  and 
Moravia ;  while  Hungary  and  Croatia  were  grouped  together. 
There  were  three  chief  chanceries  attached  to  the  court — one 
for  Bohemia,  one  for  Hungary,  and  one  for  the  Hereditary 
Provinces ;  but  these  central  offices  did  not  prevent  the 
working  of  the  autonomous  institutions  which  belonged  to 
each  kingdom.  Thus,  while  Hungary  had  its  chancery  at 
Vienna,  the  emperor  was  represented  in  the  kingdom  by  the 
palatine,  in  Croatia  by  the  ban ;  but  great  efforts  were  made 
to  bring  all  financial  and  military  matters  to  the  capital  for 
decision.  Bohemia,  which  had  been  crushed  in  1620,  had 
nothing  but  its  chancery  at  Vienna. 

The  Habsburgs  loved  absolute  power,  and  the  prestige  of 
their  imperial  title  made  them  easily  forget  the  duties  imposed 
on  them  by  that  of  king,  count,  or  archduke.  Their  rule, 
however,  was  based  on  representative  government,  each 
country  having  its  diet  where  the  delegates  of  nobles,  priests, 
and  cities  assembled.  But  these  delegates  were  not  always 
consulted  by  the  government  either  about  civil  or  criminal 
legislation  or  on  questions  of  trade.  Their  principal  business 
was  to  levy  taxes,  and  to  administer  the  internal  affairs  of  the 
province ;  authority  over  the  inferior  courts  of  justice,  and  the 
nomination  of  the  officers  of  the  provincial  government  were 
also  left  to  them.  Customs  barriers  between  the  various  pro- 
vinces seriously  interfered  with  trade.  Legislation  descended 
to  the  most  minute  and  absurd  details.  An  order  of  police 
in  167 1  divided  laymen  into  five  classes,  and  gave  the  most 


276  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

minute  instructions  as  to  what  each  class  ought  to  wear  and 
what  it  ought  to  eat.  Another  order  in  1688  reduced  the 
number  of  classes  to  three,  and  tailors  and  cooks  were  called 
upon  to  denounce  all  who  were  so  unlucky  as  to  infringe 
the  rules.  Interfering  as  the  police  was  on  certain  points,  on 
others  it  was  exceedingly  negligent.  In  those  days  Vienna, 
like  all  other  cities,  was  ill-drained.  The  plague  which  broke 
out  in  it  in  the  year  1679  was  almost  as  terrible  as  the  great 
epidemics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  emperor  Leopold  fled 
before  it,  as  he  fled  before  the  Turks  a  little  later  on.  It 
caused  the  death  of  more  than  fifty  thousand  persons. 

This  government  by  a  paternal  despotism,  together  with 
the  perpetual  wars  (which  were  usually  undertaken  for  causes 
foreign  to  the  interests  of  the  several  countries),  the  financial 
difficulties,  and  the  great  influence  of  the  Jesuits,  sufficiently 
explain  why  Austria  made  so  little  progress  in  arts  and  litera- 
ture. The  teaching  of  the  Jesuits  and  of  the  Piaristes,  who 
settled  in  the  country  at  the  close  of  1656,  was  entirely  con- 
fined to  the  lifeless  formulas  of  the  schoolmen,  and  the 
importation  of  books  and  of  foreign  ideas  was  strictly  pro- 
hibited. The  Latin  which  was  used  in  teaching  was  detestable, 
and  the  German  little  better.  The  melancholy  position  of 
Bohemia  and  Hungary  prevented  any  real  progress  in  their 
national  literature.  No  single  centre  of  intellectual  activity 
could  at  this  time  have  borne  any  comparison  with  the  little 
republic  of  Ragusa,  which  was  then  independent,  and  within 
which  the  Slav  literature  attained  its  highest  degree  of 
excellence. 

Leopold  meant,  however,  to  encourage  learning.  He  spent 
considerable  sums  of  money  on  the  royal  library,  sent  for 
some  portion  of  the  museum  of  Ambras  {Ambraser  Samtnlung) 
after  the  annexation  of  the  Tyrol,  and  placed  it  in  Vienna,  and 
collected  the  scattered  remains  of  the  library  of  Mathias 
Corvinus.  He  had  the  catalogue  of  the  manuscripts  of  the 
imperial  library  and  the  works  on  physics  of  Father  Kirschner 
printed  at  his  own  expense,  founded  the  two  universities  of  Inns- 


JOSEPH  I.  277 

bruck  and  Breslau,  and  began  the  collection  of  pictures  which 
now  forms  the  picture-gallery  of  Vienna.  But,  notwithstand- 
ing all  his  efforts,  his  reign  produced  not  one  single  man  of 
genius. 

/oseph  I.  (1705-1711) — Charles  VL  (1711-1740) — The 
Pragmatic  Sartction. 

The  very  short  reign  of  Joseph  I.,  from  1705  to  17 11,  was 
occupied  by  his  wars  with  France  for  the  Spanish  succession 
and  his  struggle  with  Rakoczy  of  Transylvania.  His  tolerance 
towards  the  Reformed  Church  has  been  praised,  and  it  is  true 
that  he  forbade  Catholic  priests  to  attack  Protestants  in  their 
sermons,  and  favoured  the  Jesuits  far  less  than  his  predecessors 
had  done.  Indeed,  if  we  are  to  believe  the  doubtful  evidence 
of  the  emperor  Joseph  II.,  he  had  some  thoughts  of  banishing 
them  from  the  kingdom.  He  also  did  not  shrink  from  a 
dispute  with  the  pope,  Clement  XL,  on  the  subject  of  the 
presentation  to  benefices,  and  the  sovereign  pontiff  issued  a  bull 
against  him,  in  which  he  reproached  the  emperor  "for  having 
forgotten  the  hereditary  piety  of  the  house  of  Austria."  But 
Clement's  action  is  largely  explained  by  his  hostility  to  the 
foreign  policy  of  Austria  and  his  devotion  to  the  cause  of 
France. 

At  the  time  of  Joseph's  death  his  brother  Charles  was  in 
Spain,  where  for  some  years  he  had  been  unsuccessfully  fighting 
against  Philip  of  Anjou  for  the  possession  of  that  kingdom, 
without  succeeding  in  gaining  more  than  Aragon,  Valencia, 
and  Catalonia.  On  leaving  for  Vienna,  he  appointed  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Christina  of  Brunswick,  governor-general  of  the  pro- 
vinces of  Aragon,  Valencia,  Sardinia,  Majorca,  Catalonia, 
Roussillon,  and  Cerdagne,  and  Stahremberg  commander  of  the 
Austrian  troops  in  the  peninsula.  The  treaty  of  Rastadt  in 
17 14  obliged  the  house  of  Austria  to  give  up  Spain,  and 
gave  to  it  in  compensation  the  Spanish  Netherlands,  Naples, 
Milan,  the  presidii  of  Tuscany,  and  Sardinia.  By  the  Barrier 
treaty  of  17 15  the  Dutch  reserved  the  right  to  place  garrisons 


278  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

in  the  towns  of  Namur,  Menin,  Ypres,  Tournai,  etc.  AVe 
shall  take  no  notice  of  the  history  of  these  ephemeral  pos- 
sessions. They  did  nothing  but  weaken  Austria,  and  it 
would  have  been  far  wiser  to  have  striven  continuously  to 
enlarge  the  borders  of  the  kingdom  at  the  expense  of  the 
Turks. 

Charles  VI.  succeeded  peacefully  to  the  empire  and  the  two 
kingdoms  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary  (171  i-i  740).  His  brother 
Joseph  I.  had  left  two  daughters,  but  the  will  of  Leopold  I.  had 
excluded  females  from  the  throne,  and,  in  default  of  male  heirs, 
had  declared  that  the  younger  should  succeed  to  the  elder 
brother.  It  had  gone  on  to  declare  that  in  case  of  Charles  VI. 
having  no  male  heir,  then  the  daughters  of  Joseph  I.,  or  of  the 
elder  branch,  should  take  precedence  of  the  daughters  of  the 
junior  branch.^  Charles  VI.  had  but  one  daughter,  Maria 
Theresa.  Immediately  after  his  accession,  he  began  a  series  of 
negociations  with  the  various  members  of  his  family  and  with 
the  diets  of  his  various  Estates,  with  the  object  of  reversing  the 
order  of  succession  as  established  by  Leopold,  and  of  securing 
the  whole  of  the  Austrian  dominions  for  the  young  princess. 
These  negociations  were  all  directed  towards  obtaining  the 
confirmation  of  the  celebrated  deed  of  settlement  which  is 
known  under  the  name  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  and  they 
occupied  most  of  the  reign  of  Charles  VI.  The  following 
were  the  principal  phases  of  the  matter. 

'    GENEALOGICAL   TABLE   OF    THE    HOUSE   OF   HABSBURG,    FROM 
LEOPOLD    \.    TO    MARIA   THERESA. 

Leopold  I.,  died  1705. 


Maria  Antonia,  Joseph  I.,  1705-1711.  Charles  VI.,  17 ii-i 740. 

d.  1692,  j I 

married  Max  I  I  I  ^j 

Emanuel,        Maria  Amelia,    Maria  Joseph,     Leopold,    Maria  Theresa, 
elector  of  d.  1756.  d.  1757,  d.  17x6.  d.  1780. 

Bavaria.  married  Augustus  III. 

of  .Saxony, 
king  of  Poland. 


CHARLES    Vl.  279 

On  the  13th  of  April,  17 13,  the  emperor  summoned  the 
Secret  Council  at  Vienna,  and  read  to  them  a  solemn  decla- 
ration, which  may  be  summed  up  in  the  three  following 
articles  : — 

I.  All  the  Austrian  dominions  form  an  indivisible  whole. 

II.  Heirs  male  in  the  house  of  Austria  succeed  each  other 
by  virtue  of  the  law  of  primogeniture. 

III.  In  default  of  heirs  male,  daughters  are  to  succeed  in 
the  following  order:  first  those  of  Charles  VI.,  then  those  of 
Joseph  I.,  then  those  of  Leopold  I. 

The  council  had  nothing  to  do  but  accept  the  royal  will 
without  any  discussion,  but  the  emperor  required  further 
guarantees.  First  of  all,  he  obtained  from  each  of  the 
princesses  interested  in  the  will  of  Leopold  a  renunciation  of 
her  rights,  and  then  he  proceeded  to  extract  a  ratification 
of  the  family  compact  from  each  of  the  different  states  over 
which  he  ruled,  beginning  with  the  more  docile. 

On  the  2ist  of  April,  1720,  the  Estates  of  Lower  Austria 
were  convoked  in  Vienna,  and  undertook  to  recognize  the 
archduchess  Maria  Theresa  as  rightful  heir  if  there  should  be 
no  heirs  male.  On  the  21st  of  September,  the  Estates  of  Silesia 
gave  the  same  promise.  The  Bohemian  nobles  had  entirely 
lost  the  habit  of  meeting  in  diets,  but  they  were  now  sum- 
moned by  Charles  to  meet  in  the  castle  of  Prague,  and 
were  informed  of  what  had  taken  place  concerning  the  suc- 
cession of  the  house  of  Austria  from  the  time  of  Ferdinand  I., 
and  of  the  projects  of  the  reigning  sovereign  for  the  good  of 
all  his  dominions  and  the  preservation  of  the  Catholic  faith. 
On  the  i6th  of  October,  1723,  a  deed  was  prepared  containing 
the  agreement  of  the  Estates  to  the  Pragmatic  Sanction,  of 
which  two  copies  were  made,  one  for  the  Bohemian  chancery 
in  Vienna,  the  other  being  deposited  among  the  archives  of 
the  kingdom,  where  it  still  remains ;  and  when  all  was  com- 
pleted, the  emperor  wrote  to  the  diet  to  thank  tliem  for  their 
compliance  with  his  wishes. 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  Hungary  would  find  it 


280  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

more  difficult  to  agree  to  the  arrangement.  On  his  coronation 
as  king  of  Hungary,  Charles  VI.  had  been  obliged  to  sign  five 
articles,  one  of  which  insisted  on  the  right  of  the  Magyars  to 
choose  their  own  king  if  he  himself  should  die  without  male 
heirs.  Besides,  Hungary  had  never  felt  cordially  towards  the 
Austrian  dynasty.  The  dependent  provinces  were  first  asked 
to  sign  the  Pragmatic  Sanction — Croatia  in  March,  1721,  and 
Transylvania  in  March,  1722;  and  then,  in  the  month  of  June 
of  this  year,  Charles  went  in  person  to  open  the  Hungarian 
diet,  which  had  already  been  prepared  by  cardinal  Csaky  to 
receive  the  king's  proposal  favourably,  and  there,  thanks  to  the 
eloquence  of  the  orator  Szluha,  he  obtained  its  ratification  by 
the  Magyars.  He  next  had  it  proclaimed  at  Milan  and  in  the 
Low  Countries.  Nothing  now  remained  to  be  done  but  to 
obtain  the  adhesion  of  the  European  powers.  The  Pragmatic 
Sanction  was  recognized  by  Prussia  and  Russia  in  1726,  in 
1 731  by  England  and  the  States-General  of  Holland,  in  1732 
by  Germany,  and  in  1733  by  Poland.  France,  Spain,  and 
Sardinia  did  not  give  in  their  adhesion  until  after  the  treaty 
of  Vienna  in  1735.  As  prince  Eugene  said,  "a  well-filled 
treasury  and  a  strong  army  would  have  been  a  better  guarantee 
than  all  these  parchments,"  for  all  the  ratifications  which  had 
been  obtained  with  so  much  difficulty  did  not  prevent  the 
powers  from  attacking  Maria  Theresa  the  moment  she  as- 
cended the  throne.  The  real  interest  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
lies  in  the  more  or  less  voluntary  consent  yielded  to  it  by  the 
various  portions  of  the  Austrian  state,  by  some  from  an  instinct 
of  hereditary  fidelity  to  the  reigning  dynasty,  by  others  only 
because  they  were  weary  of  continual  struggles,  and  felt  them- 
selves unable  to  maintain  their  existence  outside  the  Austrian 
state. 

This  agreement,  which  has  long  been  looked  upon  abroad 
as  nothing  more  than  a  bit  of  parchment  with  historical  asso- 
ciations, still  forms  the  basis  of  the  common  law  of  Austria,  and 
is  quoted  in  Parliamentary  debates.  For  example,  the  Croats 
remember  that  they  accepted  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  before 


TREATY  OF  BELGRADE.  28 1 

Hungary,  and  argue  from  this  their  right  to   the   self-govern- 
ment which  Hungary  would  withhold  from  them. 

The  recognition  of  the  Sanction  was  the  most  important 
success  obtained  by  Charles  VI.  during  his  reign.  By  the 
treaty  of  Vienna  (1735),  which  put  an  end  to  the  war  of 
the  Polish  succession,  he  lost  part  of  his  Italian  possessions,  the 
Two  Sicilies,  which  he  ceded  to  Don  Carlos  in  exchange  for 
Parma  and  Piacenza.  But  this  could  hardly  be  looked  upon 
as  a  real  loss  of  power  to  Austria.  Far  more  serious  was  the 
disastrous  treaty  of  Belgrade  (1739),  by  which  he  was  obliged 
to  restore  to  the  Porte  almost  all  that  Hungary  had  gained  by 
the-  treaty  of  Pozarevac  (Passarovitz).  A  short  time  before 
the  treaty  of  Belgrade  was  signed,  Charles  had  lost  the  great 
general  of  the  Austrian  forces,  Eugene  of  Savo}',  and  he 
himself  did  not  long  survive,  dying  in  1740  at  the  age  of 
fifty-six. 

Charles  is  celebrated  for  his  love  of  the  fine  arts,  especially 
music.  He  invited  to  his  court  Scarlati,  whose  pupil  he  was, 
and  Caldara,  both  well-known  Italian  musicians,  and  he  adorned 
Vienna  with  fine  buildings,  founded  academies  of  painting  and 
sculpture,  and  enlarged  the  collection  of  medals.  He  was  a 
great  admirer  of  Italian  literature,  and  he  had  Muratori  for  his 
historian  and  Metastasio  for  his  poet  laureate.  He  tried  hard 
to  develop  commerce,  and  to  that  end  had  a  large  number  of 
roads  made,  some  of  which  bear  his  name  to  this  day,  while  he 
also  established  at  Vienna  an  Eastern  Trading  Company  in 
1 7 19,  a  Levantine  Company  at  Trieste,  and  an  East  India 
Company  at  Ostend,  which  latter,  however,  he  soon  sacrificed 
to  the  jealousy  of  the  neighbouring  states  in  order  to  obtain 
from  them  their  recognition  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction.  Trieste 
and  Rieka  (Fiume)  were  declared  free  ports  in  his  reign,  the 
ports  of  Buccari  (Bakar)  and  Porto  Re  (Kraljevica)  were  im- 
proved, and  a  small  fleet  of  war-ships  was  created  on  the 
Danube  in  order  to  protect  the  navigation  of  that  river.  We 
must  not  forget  to  mention  the  efforts  of  Charles  VI.  to  improve 
the  administration  of  justice.     His  clemency  obtained  for  him 


282  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  surname  of  Titus  ;  but  it  did  not  extend  to  religious  matters, 
for  during  his  reign  many  of  the  Austrian  Protestants  were 
compelled  to  migrate  into  Germany  and  Transylvania. 

We  will  now  return  to  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  and  see  by 
what  series  of  events  these  two  kingdoms  were  induced  finally 
to  accept  the  rule  of  the  Austrian  dynasty. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

BOHEMIA    UNDER    THE    FIRST    AUSTRIAN    KINGS    (1526-1620). 

Ferdinand  I.  (1526-1564) — Growth  of  the  Royal  Poiver — The 
Aloiarchy  becomes  hereditary. 

The  elective  throne  of  Bohemia  had  been  left  vacant  by  the 
death  of  Louis  at  the  battle  of  Mohacs  in  1526.  Ferdinand 
of  Austria  immediately  laid  claim  to  it  in  virtue  of  the  treaties 
concluded  between  Wladyslaw  Jagiello  and  the  emperor  Maxi- 
milian ;  but  the  Estates  of  the  realm  refused  altogether  to 
recognize  their  validity,  and  insisted  that  none  but  a  freely 
elected  sovereign  could  ascend  the  throne.  Ferdinand  set  to 
work  to  conciliate  the  chief  nobles  in  Bohemia,  Moravia, 
Silesia,  and  Lusatia  by  gifts  and  promises,  and  in  consequence 
of  his  clever  management  was  at  last  chosen  by  them  in 
preference  to  his  rivals,  Sigismund  of  Poland  and  William  and 
Louis  of  Bavaria,  being  unanimously  elected  by  the  four  and 
twenty  electors  to  whom  the  diet  had  entrusted  the  decision. 
He  immediately  confirmed  all  the  privileges  of  the  kingdom 
and  the  Compactata  of  king  Sigismund,  and  signed  a  revers,  in 
which  he  acknowledged  that  he  owed  his  nomination  to  the 
free  elections  of  the  Estates  ;  at  the  same  time,  he  undertook  to 
reside  in  Prague.  A  diet  was  held  immediately  after  the 
accession  of  the  new  king,  which  defined  some  of  his  preroga- 
tives. It  authorized  him  to  have  his  successor  crowned  in  his 
own  lifetime,  provided  he  should  be  the  legal  heir  to  the 
kingdom;    it   recognized   the   exclusive  right  of  the  king  to 


284  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARY. 

convoke  diets  and  the  assemblies  of  the  circles,  and  it  granted 
supplies  for  the  war  against  John  Szapolyai  and  his  allies  the 
Turks. 

Ferdinand  at  first  got  on  well  with  his  new  subjects,  owing 
to  his  tolerance  and  his  firmness.  He  endeavoured  by  all  the 
means  in  his  power  to  put  an  end  to  the  quarrels  between  the 
various  religious  parties,  and  to  lessen  the  power  of  the  nobles, 
who  during  the  troubles  had  become  accustomed  to  the  exercise 
of  tyrannical  authority  on  their  estates.  He  entered  into  a 
solemn  engagement  to  protect  the  Utraquists,  and  to  secure 
to  them  rights  equal  to  those  of  the  Catholics ;  but  this 
tolerance  did  not  extend  to  the  Bohemian  Brothers,  who  still 
remained  proscribed,  nor  to  the  followers  of  the  new  Lutheran 
doctrines,  whom  the  Utraquists  endeavoured  to  attach  to  their 
party.  John  Pasek  of  Vrt,  the  first  consul  or  burgomaster  of 
Prague,  who  was  one  of  the  most  influential  persons  in 
Bohemia  at  this  time,  had  acquired  so  much  authority  that  he 
was  able  to  persecute  the  Lutherans,  drive  them  from  the  town, 
and  even  bring  some  of  them  to  the  stake.  In  the  reign  of 
Louis,  John  Pasek's  authority  in  Prague  had  been  almost 
boundless ;  but  Ferdinand  obliged  him  to  be  more  tolerant. 
Pasek  had  formed  the  old  and  the  new  town  into  one  single 
municipality;  Ferdinand  restored  the  aid  division,  and  ended 
by  banishing  Pasek,  notwithstanding  the  services  he  had 
rendered  him  at  the  time  of  his  election,  and  by  this  act 
restored  peace  and  order  to  the  capital.  He  took  advantage 
of  the  position  of  affairs  to  reduce  the  privileges  of  the  royal 
c;ities  by  forbidding  all  municipal  assemblies  unless  held 
with  the  permission  of  the  king ;  he  restored  regularity  to  the 
administration  of  justice,  and  put  an  end  to  the  private  wars 
which  had  so  long  wasted  the  country. 

Ferdinand  was  a  sincere  Catholic,  and  entirely  hostile  to 
the  Lutheran  doctrines,  but  circumstances  would  not  allow  him 
to  act  with  all  the  energy  he  would  have  wished.  He  forbade 
the  use  of  the  churches  to  the  Protestants,-  but  he  could  not 
prevent  the  spread  of  their  doctrines  and  their  form  of  worship 


FERDINAND  I.  285 

on  the  estates  of  the  barons  and  knights.  In  order  to  be  able 
to  fight  the  new  heresy  more  successfully,  he  strove  hard  to 
bring  about  a  union  between  the  Utraquists  and  the  Catholics, 
and  to  found  an  archbishopric  common  to  both  confessions 
(diet  of  1537);  but  in  this  he  failed.  The  Lutherans  took 
advantage  of  the  troubles  Ferdinand  met  with  in  Hungary  to 
make  an  attempt  to  form  for  themselves  a  permanent  organiza- 
tion, but  the  king  would  make  no  concessions.  Indeed,  the 
war  with  the  Turks,  instead  of  weakening  him  in  Bohemia, 
enabled  him  to  obtain  additional  supplies  of  money  over  and 
above  the  annual  subsidies. 

With  the  tenacity  of  his  race  he  never  neglected  a  single 
opportunity  of  increasing  the  prerogatives  of  his  crown  or 
dynasty;  as,  for  instance,  in  1541,  when  a  fire  destroyed 
large  portions  of  the  town  of  Prague,  and  burnt  part  of  the 
TabidcR  regni  BoJiemice.  (desky  zemske),  the  national  archives, 
in  which  the  public  and  private  charters  were  preserved,  and 
the  diet  undertook  to  replace  this  important  collection.  The 
king  then  demanded  that,  in  consideration  of  the  rights  of  his 
wife  Anna,  the  revers  which  he  had  signed  on  his  accession 
should  be  considered  as  annulled,  and  that  another  should  be 
substituted  for  it,  in  which  it  should  be  stated,  not  that  he  had 
been  elected,  but  that  he  had  been  received  as  king.  The 
Estates  had  the  weakness  to  agree  to  this  new  formula.  Already, 
in  1527,  they  had  admitted  his  right  to  have  his  successor 
crowned  during  his  lifetime,  and  this  was  to  recognize  the 
hereditary  right  of  the  Habsburgs  to  the  crown.  But  the  spirit 
of  the  people  had  been  weakened  by  their  religious  quarrels, 
and  each  party  thought  only  of  gaining  the  favour  of  the 
sovereign  by  servile  concessions,  instead  of  keeping  in  sight 
the  interests  of  the  whole  country.  This  compliant  temper 
was  not,  however,  without  limits  ;  the  Estates  were  far  from 
having  entirely  renounced  their  independence,  and  of  this  fact 
Ferdinand  had  some  experience  before  long. 


286  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Revolts  and  Persecutions  of  the  Protestants — Destruction  of  the 
Municipal  Franchises. 

In  1546,  Charles  V,  applied  for  help  to  his  brother  Ferdinand 
in  his  war  against  the  Protestant  league  of  Smalkalde.  The 
king  of  Bohemia  had  no  power  to  levy  troops  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  diet,  and  the  Utraquist  members  of  the  diet  were 
not  inclined  to  furnish  an  army  to  fight  against  those  whom 
they  looked  upon  almost  as  co-religionists.  In  spite  of  this, 
the  king  insisted  that  the  Estates  should  meet  at  Litomerice 
(Leitmeritz)  on  the  12th  of  January,  1547,  and  should  bring 
their  troops  with  them.  Some  of  the  'members  refused  to 
answer  the  sovereign's  summons ;  others  declined  to  cross  the 
frontier,  as  the  kingdom  was  not  in  danger;  and  in  the 
end  only  a  small  minority  accompanied  Ferdinand  on  his 
expedition  against  Saxony.  The  moment  he  had  left  the 
country,  discontent  broke  out ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  royal  pro- 
hibition, the  consuls  of  Prague  summoned  a  meeting  of  the 
citizens  and  formed  a  league  for  the  defence  of  the  liberties  of 
the  land,  the  Utraquist  barons  and  knights  hastened  to  the  city 
to  join  it,  and  some  of  the  Bohemian  Brothers  became  its 
leading  orators  and  chiefs.  Under  their  influence  certain 
articles  were  drawn  up  for  presentation  to  the  king,  which 
called  upon  him  to  renounce  all  those  rights  of  which  he  had 
possessed  himself  in  the  last  twenty  years,  which  increased  the 
power  of  the  crown  at  the  expense  of  the  kingdom.  According 
to  these  articles,  the  Utraquists  were  to  organize  their  Church 
as  they  wished  and  to  form  unions  in  defence  of  their  interests, 
and  the  diets  of  the  kingdom  and  the  circles  were  to  meet 
whenever  they  considered  it  necessary.  The  king  was  to  give 
up  the  concessions  made  to  him  in  1545  relative  to  the  heredi- 
tary succession  to  the  crown,  and  to  agree  to  appoint  no  public 
officers  except  with  the  consent  of  the  diet.  As  soon  as  these 
articles  were  decided  upon,  messengers  were  sent  to  Ferdinand 
to  ask  him  to  summon  a  diet  in  which  they. could  be  discussed, 
and  at  the  same   time  the   Estates  of  Silesia,  Moravia,  and 


THE  BLOODY  DIET.  28/ 

Lusatia  were  invited  to  take  similar  resolutions.  The  elector 
of  Saxony,  who  had  been  threatened  by  Charles  V.,  entered 
into  relations  with  the  Estates  assembled  at  Prague,  and  called 
upon  them  to  join  him  in  his  resistance  to  the  king  and  the 
emperor.  A  victory  gained  by  the  elector  encouraged  the 
diet  to  set  on  foot  an  army  which  was  to  go  to  his  assistance 
if  his  success  continued,  but  the  defeat  at  Miihlberg  {1547) 
destroyed  all  their  hopes.  Ferdinand  entered  Bohemia  at  the 
head  of  the  imperial  forces,  and  the  Estates  had  not  the 
courage  to  resist  him,  laying  down  their  arms  all  the  more 
quickly  in  consequence  of  his  promise  of  an  amnesty  to  all 
those  barons  and  knights  who  should  give  in  their  submission. 
Many  of  them  hastened  to  Litomerice  to  pay  their  homage 
to  their  sovereign,  and  then  marched  with  him  against  Prague. 
The  terrified  capital  surrendered  at  discretion,  and  the  other 
towns  followed  its  example.  The  king  revenged  himself  on 
the  towns,  confiscated  their  goods,  and  limited  their  powers 
of  self-government  by  the  appointment  of  royal  judges  and 
captains,  while  the  estates  of  some  few  nobles  were  confiscated, 
and  two  knights  and  two  citizens  were  put  to  death,  their 
execution  taking  place  on  the  same  day  as  the  assembly  of  the 
diet,  which  received  the  name  of  the  Bloody  Diet  (^Krvavy 
s/iem).  The  king  declared  that  the  towns  deserved  to  lose 
their  places  in  the  diet  for  their  conduct,  but  that,  in  his 
clemency,  he  would  only  restrict  or  suppress  their  privileges. 
From  this  time  no  communal  meeting  could  be  held  except  in 
the  presence  of  a  royal  judge.  Thus  this  attempted  revolution, 
badly  begun  and  badly  carried  out,  resulted  only  in  the  increase 
of  the  power  of  the  dynasty,  enlarged  the  royal  dominions, 
which  had  been  much  reduced  in  former  reigns,  and  weakened 
the  power  of  the  diets,  where  the  town  representatives  could 
only  appear  by  royal  favour,  and,  it  might  almost  be  said, 
controlled  by  royal  officers. 

These  energetic  measures  enabled  Ferdinand  to  leave 
Bohemia  for  Augsburg,  where  Charles  V.  had  just  convoked 
the  imperial  diet.     He  left  the  archduke  Ferdinand,  his  second 


288  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

son,  as  regent.  While  at  Augsburg,  the  German  princes  de- 
manded that  Bohemia  should  be  made  subject  to  the  same 
charges  as  the  rest  of  the  empire  ;  but  Ferdinand  knew  how- 
to  defend  the  rights  of  his  kingdom,  and  maintained  his  inde- 
pendence as  regarded  Germany.  Soon  after  this  he  established 
a  royal  court  of  appeal  at  Prague  for  all  his  Bohemian  pos- 
sessions, suppressed  the  town  courts  of  Prague  and  Litomerice, 
prohibited  the  further  use  of  the  German  code  of  Magdeburg, 
and  brought  about  the  unification  of  the  law  throughout  the 
whole  of  the  kingdom  of  St.  Vacslav.  In  the  same  year  he 
renewed  the  persecutions  of  the  Picards  and  the  Bohemian 
Brothers,  breaking  up  their  communities,  and  forcing  the 
Brothers  to  join  either  the  Catholics  or  the  Utraquists.  Those 
who  refused  were  banished,  and  more  than  eight  hundred 
emigrated  into  Prussia  and  Poland,  many  of  them  going  to 
Leszno,  near  Poznan  (Posen),  where,  later  on,  the  great 
Komensky^  came  to  seek  them.  One  of  their  elders,  John 
Augusta,  was  thrown  into  prison,  and  remained  there  till  the 
death  of  the  king. 

Ferdinand  proposed  fresh  measures  against  the  Lutherans 
at  the  diet  of  1549,  but  he  met  with  strong  resistance  from  both 
Bohemia  and  Moravia,  and  the  energy  shown  by  the  German 
Protestants  obliged  him  to  renounce  them.  The  peace  of 
Augsburg  (1556),  which  secured  the  triumph  of  the  Reforma- 
tion in  Germany,  gave  fresh  courage  to  the  Evangelicals  of 
Bohemia.  In  order  to  resist  them,  Ferdinand  threw  himself 
more  passionately  than  ever  on  the  side  of  the  Catholics,  sum- 
moned the  Jesuits  to  Prague  (1556),  founded  an  archbishopric 
for  the  Catholics,  and  entered  into  negociations  with  the 
Council  of  Trent  for  the  admission  of  Utraquists  into  the 
Catholic  Church.  In  1564,  he  obtained  the  sanction  of  the 
pope,  Pius  IV.,  and  the  authorization  of  the  Council  of  Trent 
for  the  use  of  the  Cup  throughout  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia, 
and  in  Prague  the  Jesuits  and  the  archbishop  himself  might 
be  seen  administering  the  sacrament  under  both  kinds. 
'  See  post,  p.  304. 


MAXIMILIAN  II.  289 

During  his  lifetime,  on  the  14th  of  February,  1549,  Ferdi- 
nand succeeded  in  getting  his  eldest  son,  Maximilian,  recog- 
nized as  heir  to  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia,  and  crowned  in  1562. 

Maximilian  II.  {\^ 64-1 5 7 6) — Rudolf  II.  ( 1 5  7 6-1 6 1 2) —  Wars 
with  Mathias  and  the  Utraqidsts. 

Maximilian  II.  was  favourable  to  the  Reformation,  and 
ascended  the  throne  with  ideas  of  toleration,  which  he  applied 
so  far  as  the  spirit  of  the  time  allowed.  He  granted  the 
request  of  the  Utraquists  that  they  should  be  allowed  to  govern 
themselves  not  according  to  the  Compactata,  but  according  to 
"  the  Word  of  God."  The  Evangelicals,  however,  were  not 
able  to  obtain  the  king's  recognition  of  the  Confession  of 
Augsburg,  and  consequently  joined  with  the  Bohemian 
Brothers,  who  still  existed  though  in  secret,  to  elaborate  a 
kind  of  confession  of  faith  of  their  own ;  but  this  also  failed 
to  obtain  the  recognition  of  the  sovereign,  and  the  Lutheran 
Church  was  allowed  to  remain  without  clergy  and  without 
government.  This  led  to  a  state  of  disorder  and  moral  anarchy 
which  wasted  the  energy  of  the  best  men  of  the  time. 

We  shall  not  dwell  on  the  wearisome  quarrels  which  filled 
almost  the  whole  of  the  reign  of  Maximilian.  During  his 
reign  and  that  of  his  predecessor,  as  regarded  foreign  enemies, 
Bohemia  was  at  peace ;  she  had  to  furnish  some  levies  against 
the  Turks  and  Hungarians,  but  no  enemy  was  seen  on  the 
native  soil.  But  the  Chekh  nation  was  enervated  by  this  long 
peace,  spent  in  endless  theological  discussions  and  religious 
quarrels ;  it  lost  those  warlike  qualities  which  had  been  its 
glory  in  the  previous  century.  The  national  literature,  verbose 
and  pedantic,  was  more  remarkable  for  the  quantity  than  the 
quality  of  its  productions.  A  large  number  of  foreigners, 
especially  Germans,  again  settled  in  the  capital ;  and  the 
policy  of  the  sovereign  was  always  prompted  by  the  interests 
of  either  Germany  or  his  own  dynasty,  never  by  those  of  the 
kingdom. 

Rudolf  II.  (15  7 6-1 6 1 2)  had  more  taste  for  arts  and  science 

u 


290  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

than  for  theology.  Like  Charles  IV.,  he  made  Prague  one  of 
the  most  learned  cities  in  Europe,  and  in  his  time  Chekh 
literature  made  remarkable  progress ;  the  prose  of  Adam  of 
Veleslavin^  being  still  considered  classical,  though  his  matter 
lacks  originality.  The  Bohemian  Brothers  published  a  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible,  which  was  for  Bohemia  what  Luther's  was 
for  Germany.  The  number  of  foreigners  in  the  kingdom 
continued  to  increase.  Rudolf,  who  had  been  educated  in 
Spain,  never  knew  the  national  language,  and  he  was  always 
surrounded  by  Spaniards  and  Germans.  -Though  a  Catholic, 
his  character  was  so  indolent  and  dreamy  that  for  a  long  time 
he  remained  either  ignorant  of  the  religious  quarrels  of  his 
subjects,  or  quite  indifferent  to  them.  The  Jesuits  made  great 
progress  in  Bohemia  during  his  reign,  and  acquired  consider- 
able influence  both  in  the  schools  and  with  the  Catholic 
nobles,  and  in  the  end  the  Catholics  obtained  an  overpowering 
influence  over  the  enfeebled  character  of  Rudolf.  In  1602, 
he  renewed  the  persecutions  of  the  Bohemian  Brothers,  and 
the  Utraquists  found  it  impossible  to  defend  them,  as  the 
Jesuits  and  fanatical  Catholics  had  become  complete  masters 
of  the  kingdom.  All  the  servants  of  government  were  obliged, 
under  pain  of  dismissal  and  exile,  to  sign  a  confession  of 
the  Catholic  faith ;  and  we  are  even  told  of  a  certain  lord, 
Borita  of  Martinice,  who  on  his  estates  hunted  his  peasants  to 
church  with  his  dogs,  and  forced  them  to  receive  the  sacra- 
ment. A  provincial  synod  was  about  this  time  assembled  by 
the  archbishop  of  Prague,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  restor- 
ing the  whole  of  Bohemia  to  the  Catholic  union.  Religious 
dissensions  broke  out  worse  than  ever  when  the  feeble  Rudolf 
had  to  defend  his  power  against  his  brother  Mathias,  who  was 
impatient  to  rule  over  the  whole  of  the  Austrian  dominions 
and  had  found  allies  in  the  Bohemian  Brothers  of  Moravia,  led 
by  their  chief,  Charles  of  Zerotin.  Zerotiu  is  an  important 
person  in  Moravian  history.  He  was  devoted  to  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  had  been  a  good  deal  associated  with  Henry  IV.  of 
'  See  Morfill's  Sl<xvo7iic  Literature,  p.  234. 


RUDOLFS  CONCESSIONS    TO    THE  SECTS.  29 1 

France,  to  whom  he  lent  money,  and  in  whose  army  he  served 
during  the  siege  of  Rouen  in  1591.  His  correspondence, 
which  is  otherwise  very  remarkable,  supplies  us  with  some 
curious  details  concerning  that  prince. 

Zerotin  convoked  the  Estates  of  the  kingdom  at  Caslav 
and  entered  Bohemia,  but  they  remained  true  to  their  lawful 
king  and  flocked  round  him  at  Prague.  The  Utraquists  took 
advantage  of  the  position  of  affairs  to  ask  that  their  religious 
grievances  should  be  redressed,  and  to  demand  political 
reforms.  Rudolf  promised  all  they  asked,  and  purchased 
peace  with  Mathias  by  the  treaty  of  Libno  (1608),  by  which  he 
ceded  Moravia  to  him. 

At  the  diet  held  in  1609,  the  Evangelicals  and  the 
Bohemian  Brothers  renewed  their  demands,  calling  upon  the 
emperor  to  recognize  the  Bohemian  confession,  to  admit  them 
into  the  consistory  of  the  Utraquists,  and  to  entrust  to  them 
the  management  of  the  university  of  Prague.  The  emperor 
refused  these  demands,  whereupon  they  constituted  themselves 
an  independent  diet  in  the  town-hall  of  the  new  town  of 
Prague,  and  formed  an  armed  league  for  the  protection  of 
their  religion.  At  the  head  of  their  troops  they  placed  count 
Mathias  of  Thurn,  a  German  gentleman  w'ho  had  shortly 
before  come  to  settle  in  Bohemia,  and  they  also  appointed 
a  committee  of  seventy-five  directors,  who  were  charged  with 
the  defence  of  their  interests.  The  Estates  of  Silesia  joined 
this  league. 

The  emperor-king,  alarmed,  begged  the  elector  of  Saxony 
to  act  as  mediator,  and  offered  to  allow  the  formation  of  a 
special  consistory  for  the  Bohemian  Brothers.  They  refused 
his  offer  and  drew  up  their  demands  under  the  form  of  a 
letter  of  majesty — that  is  to  say,  a  fundamental  and  perpetual  law 
— which  Rudolf  at  last  made  up  his  mind  to  sign  on  the  9th  of 
July,  1609.  This  celebrated  document  secured  the  recognition 
of  the  Bohemian  confession,  the  admittance  of  the  Evangelicals 
and  Bohemian  Brothers  to  the  consistory  and  their  right  to 
govern  the  university.     Besides,  they  were  to  choose  a  certain 


292  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-ITUNGARY. 

number  of  defenders  of  the  faith  from  among  the  lords, 
knights,  and  citizens  who  were  to  maintain  these  privileges. 
At  the  same  time,  a  treaty  concluded  between  the  Catholics  and 
Utraquists  decreed,  as  the  treaty  of  Kutna  Hora  had  formerly 
declared  (1485),  that  for  the  future  all  religious  parties  were 
to  tolerate  one  another.  The  whole  matter  was  a  definite 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  liberty  of  conscience,  so  far  as  it 
was  understood  at  the  time,  and  was  a  kind  of  Edict  of  Nantes, 
which  secured  religious  peace  to  Bohemia  for  the  future. 

Rudolf  had  signed  the  letter  of  majesty  sorely  against  his  will, 
and  could  think  of  it  only  with  humiliation  and  with  grief.  He 
neglected  no  opportunity  of  revenging  himself,  and  before  long 
instigated  the  archduke  Leopold,  the  younger  brother  of  Ferdi- 
nand of  Styria,  and  bishop  of  Passau  and  Strassburg,  to  attack 
Bohemia.  Leopold  collected  an  army  on  the  frontiers  under 
the  pretext  that  he  wished  to  conquer  the  duchies  of  Cleves 
and  Juliers ;  this  army,  about  twelve  thousand  strong,  pushed  on 
into  Bohemia  and  captured  Budejovice,  Tabor,  and  Pisek,  and 
reached  Prague  (161 1).  The  diet  was  taken  by  surprise,  but 
soon  assembled  an  army  which  put  the  invaders  to  flight, 
When  once  free  from  their  enemies,  the  Estates  turned  round 
upon  Rudolf,  whom  they  suspected,  not  without  reason,  of 
complicity  with  Leopold^  besieged  him  in  his  royal  castle,  and 
forced  him  to  abdicate.  They  then  elected  Mathias,  who 
came  up  with  an  army  of  eight  thousand  men.  Rudolf  died 
the  following  year  (1612). 

Mathias  (1612-1619) — The  Defenestration  at  Prague  (1618). 

Unhappily,  the  Protestants  and  Utraquists  did  not  know 
how  to  make  a  good  use  of  the  liberty  which  they  had  secured 
so  much  against  the  will  of  Rudolf  An  agreement  was 
entered  into  by  the  Evangelicals  and  the  Brothers,  according 
to  which  a  new  consistory  was  to  be  chosen  and  the  higher 
dignitaries  elected  from  among  these  two  parties ;  but  no  serious 
steps  were  taken  to  increase  the  number  of  their  clergy  or  to 
improve  Church  discipline,  and  the  reformers  continued  to  be 


MATHIAS.  293 

divided  into  two  rival  camps  by  th-  dogmas  of  Luther  and 
Calvin.  They  had  taken  possession  of  the  university  of 
Prague,  but  they  found  it  far  easier  to  destroy  institutions  than 
to  restore  them.  No  one  was  ready  to  make  the  sacrifices 
necessary  to  carry  on  the  teaching  with  efficiency,  and  the 
old  school  of  John  Hus  was  never  again  able  to  recover  the 
brilliant  position  it  had  formerly  enjoyed.  The  Estates  busied 
themselves  less  with  the  religious  improvement  of  the  nation 
than  with  the  increaae  of  its  political  liberty.  At  the  corona- 
tion of  Mathias  they  presented  the  following  conditions  to  him. 
They  claimed  the  right — ist,  to  hold  diets  even  without  the 
permission  of  the  king ;  andly,  to  summon  the  army  whenever 
they  judged  it  necessary ;  3rdly,  to  maintain  the  union  entered 
into  with  the  Estates  of  Silesia  in  1600  for  the  defence  of  the 
common  religion ;  4thly,  to  conclude  similar  treaties  with  neigh- 
bouring states;  and,  lastl)',  to  renew  the  treaties  formerly  entered 
into  by  George  of  Podiebrad  with  the  electors  of  Saxony,  Bran- 
denburg, and  the  Palatinate,  now  become  Protestant,  in  such 
sort  that  the  diets  should  be  able  to  apply  for  help  to  these 
princes  in  their  conflicts  with  the  king.  Of  these  propositions 
Mathias  only  ratified  the  third,  adjourning  the  discussion  of 
the  remainder,  and  meantime  he  endeavoured  to  disarm  the 
leaders  of  opposition  by  honours  and  gifts.  He  w^as  not  suc- 
cessful, and  the  Protestants  sought  for  allies  among  the  Hun- 
garians and  Austrians,  and  among  the  Protestant  princes  and 
those  states  who  were  interested  in  the  lessening  of  the  power 
of  the  Austrian  dynasty.  The  emperor-king  tried  to  avert 
the  threatened  crisis  by  bringing  forward  a  proposal  for  a  war 
against  the  Turks,  and  invited  the  delegates  of  the  various 
diets  of  the  Austrian  dominions  to  meet  him  at  Linz  in  the 
August  of  1 6 14.  Here  they  refused  his  request  for  men  and 
money.  He  then  convoked  a  general  diet  of  the  provinces 
belonging  to  the  Bohemian  crown  at  Prague  on  the  same  pre- 
text. This  assembly  also  remained  deaf  to  the  sovereign's 
proposals,  and  contented  itself  with  taking  vigorous  measures 
for  the  maintenance   of  the  Chekh  language  as  the  official 


294  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

language  of  the  kingdom,  while,  in  order  to  avert  the  danger 
to  Slav  nationality,  threatened  once  more  by  German  immi- 
gration, it  also  decided  that  in  future  no  one  should  be  admitted 
into  Bohemia  who  could  not  speak  Chekh. 

Mathias,  having  no  heir,  proposed  that  the  diet  should 
recognize  his  cousin,  Ferdinand  of  Styria,  as  his  successor  on 
the  throne  of  Bohemia.  He  succeeded  in  having  him  crowned, 
but  not  without  some  resistance,  as  it  was  well  known  that 
Ferdinand  was  an  enemy  to  the  new  forms  of  religion  and  a 
bigoted  supporter  of  Catholicism. 

An  apparently  slight  incident  which  occurred  about  this 
time  once  more  aroused  the  religious  passions  which  were 
only  slumbering.  On  the  strength  of  the  letter  of  majesty  the 
Utraquists  had  built  some  churches  on  the  abbey-lands  of 
Brevnov  and  in  the  archbishopric  of  Prague.  The  letter  of 
majesty  had,  however,  only  proclaimed  tolerance  within  the 
royal  cities,^  and  the  abbot  and  archbishop  consequently  ordered 
the  churches  to  be  closed,  and  appealed  to  the  king.  After 
many  discussions,  the  king  decided  that  the  church  at  Brevnov 
should  be  shut  up  by  the  abbot,  and  one  which  had  been  built 
in  the  German  town  of  Klostergrab  destroyed  by  the  arch- 
bishop (1618).  But  as  soon  as  this  news  reached  the  De- 
fenders of  the  Faith  they  convoked  the  Protestant  assembly, 
and  that  body  proceeded  to  declare  that  the  government  had 
violated  the  letter  of  majesty,  and  sent  messengers  to  Vienna, 
where  the  sovereign  then  was,  to  demand  the  restoration  of 
the  churches.  Mathias  refused,  and  ordered  the  assembly  to 
dissolve.  This  excited  their  intense  wrath,  and,  after  some 
hesitation,  they  determined  to  break  with  the  king  and  to  pro- 
claim their  independence  in  some  startling  fashion.  On  leaving 
the  country  Mathias  had  appointed  ten  lieutenants  to  govern 
it,  and  it  was  resolved  that  these  ten  lieutenants  should  be 
hurled  from  the  windows  of  the  castle  of  Hradcany  at  Prague. 
Popular  anger  had  already  chosen  this  method  of  punishing  its 
victims  in  earlier  times  and  under  other  circumstances.  The 
'  See,  however,  S.  R.  Gardiner,  History  of  England,  vol.  iii.  pp.  264-266. 


THE  DEFENESTRATION  OF  PRAGUE.  295 

23rd  of  May  was  fixed  for  the  revolt.  The  Protestant  members 
of  the  council  of  the  wtw  town,  notwithstanding  all  the 
efforts  of  the  royal  judge,  remained  in  attendance  on  the 
deliberations  of  the  assembly.  The  leaders  of  the  conspirators 
were  count  Thurn,  Schlick,  and  William  of  Lobkovice.  They 
arrived  armed  at  the  castle,  where  they  found  four  of  the  royal 
lieutenants,  the  grand  burgrave,  Adam  of  Sternberg,  with  his  son- 
in-law,  Jaroslav  of  Martinice,  burgrave  of  Karlstein,  the  chief 
justice,  William  of  Slavata,  and  the  grand  prior  of  the  Knights 
of  Malta,  Diepold  of  Lobkovice  ;  and  with  them  was  Fabricius, 
the  secretary,  an  obscure  personage  whom  this  day  was  to  make 
celebrated.  The  room,  which  is  still  shown  in  the  castle  of 
Prague,  was  small,  and  but  a  small  number  of  the  conspirators 
could  get  into  it,  but  among  them  were  Thurn,  Schlick, 
William  of  Lobkovice,  Ulric  Kinsky,  and  Paul  of  Rican. 
They  angrily  questioned  the  lieutenants,  and  demanded  whether 
they  had  not  prompted  the  threatening  letter  which  the  as- 
sembly had  received  from  Mathias.  The  lieutenants  refused 
to  reply.  Thurn  insisted,  and  declared  that  he  would  not  quit 
the  room  until  he  had  received  an  explanation.  Schlick  and 
Lobkovice  violently  addressed  the  lieutenants :  "  You  dogs 
of  Jesuits,  you  shall  find  out  that  you  have  not  to  deal  with 
women  ! "  All  the  conspirators  were  convinced  that  Martinice 
and  Slavata  were  mainly  responsible  for  the  imperial  letter,  and, 
in  spite  of  their  protests,  these  men  were  declared  enemies  of 
their  country  and  pronounced  outside  the  law.  The  con- 
spirators then  thrust  Sternberg  and  Diepold  of  Lobkovice  out 
of  the  door,  while  the  two  other  lieutenants  were  seized  and 
flung  down  from  the  windows  of  the  castle.  Philip  Fabricius, 
the  secretary,  who  had  hidden  himself  among  those  present, 
shared  the  same  fate.  By  a  strange  chance  the  three  men 
escaped  the  death  that  was  meant  for  them.  Although  they 
fell  from  a  height  of  more  than  forty  yards,  they  were  not 
hurt.  The  rubbish  with  which  the  ditch  of  the  castle  was  filled 
had  broken  their  fall.  Slavata  alone  was  slightly  injured. 
They  made  their  escape  under  a  brisk  fire  from  the  guns,  and 


296  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

hid  themselves  in  the  house  of  a  friend.  The  CathoUcs  did 
not  fail  to  attribute  their  safety  to  a  miracle.  Fabricius 
hastened  to  Vienna  to  carry  the  news  of  the  catastrophe,  and 
there  he  was  raised  to  the  nobility  as  the  reward  of  his  fidelity, 
and  received  the  appropriate  title  of  Hohenfall  (Lord  of  the 
High  Fall).  Martinice  fled  to  Bavaria,  and  Slavata,  later  on, 
succeeded  in  reaching  Saxony. 

Bohemia  in  Revolt  (16 18) — The  Thirty  Directors. 

The  defenestration  of  Prague  was  the  signal  for  a  terrible 
war.  The  assembly,  immediately  after  their  act  of  rebellion, 
proceeded  to  form  a  provisional  government,  composed  of 
thirty  directors.  They  then  assembled  an  army,  which  they 
placed  under  the  supreme  command  of  count  Thurn,  sent  to 
ask  the  German  princes  for  their  alliance,  and  banished  from 
the  country  the  Jesuits,  the  archbishop,  and  the  bishop  of 
Brevno.  Taken  by  surprise  by  the  revolt,  the  emperor  at  first 
hesitated  what  step  to  take.  His  favourite,  cardinal  Khlesl, 
advised  moderation ;  and  Mathias  was  ready  to  listen  to  him, 
as  he  was  weakly  and  dreaded  the  war  which  his  heir,  the 
impetuous  Ferdinand,  urged  him  to  undertake.  He  first  sent 
an  envoy  to  Prague  in  the  hope  of  treating  with  the  rebels  ; 
but  this  proved  of  no  use,  and  in  the  mean  time  the  latter 
refused  to  allow  the  royal  lieutenants  to  go  out  of  their  sight. 
It  was  not  an  easy  matter  for  Mathias  at  this  moment  to 
collect  an  army  against  Bohemia.  He  was  busied  about  the 
recognition  of  Ferdinand  as  his  successor  ;  the  diet  of  Hungary 
was  anything  but  docile,  and  both  Upper  Austria  and  Moravia 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  raising  troops  against  the 
Chekhs.  Meanwhile  the  Bohemians  did  not  wait  to  be  attacked, 
but  marched  against  the  Catholic  provinces  who  were  faithful 
to  the  dynasty,  and  besieged  the  town  of  Budejovice  (Bud- 
weiss).  In  order  to  force  Mathias  into  action,  his  two  brothers, 
Ferdinand  and  Maximilian,  at  last  seized  cardinal  Khlesl  by 
surprise  and  shut  him  up  in  the  castle  of  Ambras  in  the  Tyrol. 
Deprived  of  his  constant  adviser,  Mathias  now  allowed  Ferdi- 


DEATH  OF  MATHIAS.  297 

nand  to  manage  his  afifairs ;  and  an  army  of  ten  thousand  men, 
commanded  by  Henry  of  Dampierre,  soon  entered  Bohemia. 
Thurn  was  obliged  to  raise  the  siege  of  Budejovice  ;  but  he 
repulsed  Dampierre  in  two  engagements,  one  at  Caslav,  the 
other  at  Lomnice,  and  obliged  him  to  retreat  into  Austria. 
The  imperial  army  was  soon  reinforced  by  some  Spanish  troops, 
led  by  the  general,  Charles  Buquoi.  But  the  Chekhs  also 
were  by  no  means  without  allies.  The  whole  of  Protestant 
Germany  had  been  the  enemy  of  Austria  ever  since  the 
Schmalcaldic  War,  and  the  revolt  of  Bohemia  was  the  signal 
for  a  European  reaction  against  the  excessive  power  of  the 
house  which  held  Europe  and  the  Reformation  in  check ;  in 
order  to  obtain  universal  sympathy,  the  kingdom  had  only  to 
declare  its  resolution  never  again  to  belong  to  the  Habsburgs. 
Charles  Emanuel  of  Savoy  and  the  princes  of  the  Evangelical 
Union  furnished  the  Estates  with  an  auxiliary  force  which  was 
paid  for  out  of  a  common  fund  and  led  by  Ernest  of  Mansfeld. 
This  general  entered  Bohemia  and  took  possession  of  Plzen 
(Pilsen),  which  remained,  as  it  had  always  done,  true  to  the 
Catholic  faith,  and  refused  to  recognize  the  authority  of  the 
Estates.  Mansfeld  also  defeated  Buquoi,  and  obliged  him  to 
shut  himself  up  in  Budejovice. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  winter,  the  elector  of  Saxony  and 
Sigismund,  king  of  Poland,  tried  to  act  as  mediators  between 
the  emperor  Mathias  and  Bohemia,  and  to  this  end  a  congress 
met  at  Cheb  (Eger),  but  it  did  nothing.  The  plenipotentiaries 
of  Bohemia  insisted  on  the  definite  acceptance  by  Mathias  of 
the  four  articles  which  had  been  in  dispute  ever  since  his 
accession,  and  before  any  decision  was  arrived  at  he  died  on 
the  20th  of  March,  1619. 


CHAPTER  XVII r. 

BOHEMIA   CONQUERED    (1619-1740). 

Ferdinand  II.  ( 1 6 1 9-1637). 

Ferdinand  showed  more  energy  than  his  predecessor  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  struggle.  He  began  his  reign  by  a  letter 
addressed  not  to  the  Estates,  but  to  the  old  royal  lieutenants, 
in  which  he  announced  to  them  that  he  should  respect  the 
letter  of  majesty  and  those  privileges  which  he  had  sworn  to 
observe  at  the  time  of  his  coronation,  and  promised  to  restore 
peace  and  order  to  the  kingdom.  At  the  same  time  he  offered 
to  conclude  a  truce  with  his  revolted  subjects.  But  the  diet 
refused  his  offers,  and  in  the  spring  of  161 9  Henry  of  Thurn 
entered  Moravia.  The  greater  part  of  the  Estates  of  this 
province,  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant,  had  refused  to  join 
the  Bohemian  revolt.  At  their  head  was  that  Charles  of 
Zerotin  of  whom  we  have  already  heard  as  leader  of  the 
Bohemian  Brothers.  He  was  both  a  lawyer  and  a  soldier,  and 
possessed  great  influence.  He  had  more  than  once  been 
the  object  of  fanatical  attack,  and  had  suffered  from  cowardly 
persecution ;  but,  in  spite  of  this,  he  had  set  out  for  Prague 
immediately  after  the  defenestration  in  order  to  persuade  the 
revolutionists  to  follow  the  counsels  of  moderation  and  obedi- 
ence, and  although  his  brother-in-law,  Albert  of  Wallenstein, 
and  one  of  his  sons-in-law  were  among  their  number,  he 
remained  faithful  to  the  king.  The  arrivaLof  Thurn  in  Moravia 
provided  the  malcontents  of  that  province  with  a  leader,  and 


ELECTION  OF  FREDERICK,    ELECTOR-PALATINE     299 

the  Estates  entered  the  confederation  formed  by  Bohemia, 
Silesia,  and  Lusatia,  and  joined  the  three  provinces  in  con- 
stituting a  provisional  government  of  twenty-four  directors. 
Then  Thurn  marched  to  Vienna,  where  the  Protestants  rose 
and  demanded  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion,  but  he  was 
recalled  to  Bohemia  by  the  defeat  of  Mansfeld  by  Buquoi. 

Bohemia  could  not  remain  without  a  king.  In  those 
days  no  one  thought  it  possible  for  a  country  to  rule  itself,  and 
the  patriotism  of  the  nobles  was  not  sufficiently  intelligent  to 
induce  them  to  choose  a  king  from  among  their  countrymen. 
There  were  three  candidates  for  the  throne  :  the  young  elector- 
palatine,  Frederick,  who  was  chief  of  the  German  Evangelical 
Union ;  John  George,  elector  of  Saxony ;  and  Charles  Em- 
anuel, duke  of  Savoy.  The  general  diet  of  all  the  Bohemian 
territories  summoned  to  Prague  by  the  directors,  elected 
Frederick  on  the  26th  of  September,  1619;  and  the  elector 
of  Saxony,  in  his  vexation,  immediately  became  reconciled  to 
Ferdinand,  who  had  just  been  chosen  emperor. 

Frederick  came  to  Prague,  and,  notwithstanding  that  he  was 
a  Protestant,  was  crowned  in  the  city  of  St.  Vit  by  the  Utra- 
quist  administrator,  for  the  Chekhs  cared  at  least  as  much  for 
their  historical  traditions  as  for  their  religious  opinions.  He 
undertook  to  recognize  the  four  articles  which  had  been  dis- 
puted by  Mathias,  and  which  placed  the  sovereign  completely 
under  the  control  of  the  Estates.  Almost  all  the  Catholics  were 
opposed  to  the  election  of  Frederick,  but  his  cause  was  mate- 
rially assisted  by  the  invasion  of  Hungary  by  Gabriel  Bethlen, 
as  Buquoi  was  obliged  to  leave  Bohemia  to  march  against  the 
Transylvanian  troops.  Thurn  pursued  him  as  far  as  the  Danube. 
At  a  diet  held  at  Pozsony  (Pressburg),  a  treaty  was  concluded 
between  the  Chekhs,  Hungarians,  and  Transylvanians  against 
the  house  of  Austria,  the  contracting  parties  even  sending  an 
embassy  to  Constantinople  to  endeavour  to  arrive  at  an  under- 
standing with  the  Porte.  In  1620,  however,  Bethlen  made  peace 
with  Ferdinand,  and  the  emperor  employed  the  winter  season 
in  getting  ready  his  army.     Philip  III.,  king  of  Spain,  and  the 


30O  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

pope  both  sent  him  troops,  as  also  did  the  elector  of  Bavaria, 
to  whom  he  pledged  Upper  Austria,  and  the  elector  of  Saxony, 
to  whom  he  promised  both  Upper  and  Lower  Lusatia.  Sigis- 
mund  of  Poland  also  offered  his  help.  The  German  Protes- 
tant princes,  who  were  desirous  of  helping  Bohemia,  could  do 
nothing,  as  they  were  paralyzed  by  the  presence  of  the  Spaniards, 
who  at  that  time  had  possession  of  the  Low  Countries. 
Bohemia  therefore  found  herself  without  allies,  and,  what  was 
still  worse,  the  palatine  Frederic  proved  himself  quite  unfit 
for  the  position  he  held.  He  was  a  fanatical  Calvinist,  and 
favoured  the  sect  of  Bohemian  Brothers  to  the  detriment  of 
the  Lutherans,  whose  anger  he  excited ;  he  changed  the 
national  cathedral  of  St.  Vitus  into  a  bare  Protestant  church, 
and  he  irritated  his  best  generals,  Thurn  and  Mansfeld,  by  the 
preference  he  showed  for  the  foreign  advisers  whom  he  had 
brought  with  him.  Almost  the  whole  of  his  army  was  composed 
of  mercenaries,  and  yet  he  was  in  constant  need  of  money. 

Battle  of  the  White  Moimtain  (1620) — Political  and  Religious 
Reaction  (1620-1627). 

In  the  spring  of  1620  Frederick's  army  invaded  Lower 
Austria,  but  obtained  no  decisive  victory.  In  vain  did  Gabriel 
Bethlen  renew  his  alliance  with  Bohemia ;  in  vain  did  Mehemet 
Aga,  the  ambassador  of  the  SubUme  Porte,  come  to  congratu- 
late Frederick  on  the  success  he  had  obtained  and  promise  him 
help.  Ferdinand  and  his  allies  acted  with  an  energy  which 
destroyed  every  hope.  Maximilian  of  Bavaria  and  Tilly 
entered  Upper  Austria,  the  elector  of  Saxony  Lusatia,  while 
the  king  of  Poland's  Cossacks  made  their  way  down  to  Lower 
Austria;  and  it  was  not  long  before  Maximilian  and  Buquoi 
invaded  Bohemia  on  the  south  with  an  army  of  fifty  thousand 
men.  Bohemia  had  only  twenty-five  thousand.  Krumlov, 
Budejovice,  Pisek,  Strakonice,  and  Klatovy  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  imperialists.  The  Bohemian  troops  were  obliged  to  fall 
back,  and  entrenched  themselves  on  the  plateau  of  the  White 
Mountain   (Bila-Hora,   Weissenberg),  to  the  west  of  Prague, 


BATTLE   OF  THE    WHITE  MOUNTAIN.  3OI 

where  they  awaited  attack.  Here  they  were  completely  de- 
feated and  put  to  flight  by  the  two  invading  armies,  notwith- 
standing the  heroism  of  the  Hungarian  cavalry  sent  by  Bethlen, 
and  the  courage  of  the  Moravians,  who  fought  to  the  last.  Ten 
thousand  corpses  covered  the  field  of  battle,  and  the  whole 
Chekh  camp  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  When  the 
battle  began,  Frederick  was  quietly  feasting  in  his  palace  ; 
they  brought  him  word  that  the  battle  had  begun,  but  by  the 
time  he  had  reached  the  gate  of  Prague  he  was  met  by  the 
ruins  of  his  army  rushing  into  the  city  (November  8,  1620). 

But  all  hope  was  not  yet  lost.  Prague  might  hold  out ; 
eight  thousand  Magyars,  sent  by  Bethlen,  had  just  reached  the 
frontier ;  Moravia  and  Silesia  were  in  arms ;  Mansfeld  was  still 
in  possession  of  several  strongly  fortified  towns,  such  as  Plzen 
and  Tabor ;  Lusatia  alone  had  yielded,  and  was  occupied  by 
the  Saxon  troops.  But  Frederick,  considering  his  position 
desperate,  retired  to  Breslau,  and  the  Estates,  abandoned  by 
the  monarch  whom  they  had  chosen,  opened  the  gates  of  the 
city  and  surrendered  at  discretion  to  the  conqueror. 

Ferdinand  now  entrusted  Charles  of  Lichtenstein  with  the 
government  of  Bohemia,  while  Buquoi  pushed  on  to  Moravia 
to  complete  the  submission  of  that  province.  The  elector  of 
Saxony  soon  brought  Silesia  under  control,  and  Frederick,  who 
had  continued  to  exercise  the  last  remains  of  his  ephemeral 
power  in  Breslau,  was  obliged  to  leave  that  city  ;  Mansfeld 
also  was  forced  to  quit  Bohemia,  after  having  resisted  for  some 
time  in  the  western  part  of  the  kingdom. 

As  long  as  he  was  not  quite  sure  of  victory,  Ferdinand  had 
exercised  a  prudent  reserve,  and  had  allowed  no  one  to  know 
what  were  his  intentions  towards  his  revolted  subjects ;  but  the 
moment  he  felt  himself  complete  master  of  the  situation  he  set 
no  bounds  to  his  vengeance.  He  gave  orders  for  the  arrest  of 
all  the  old  offenders,  the  directors,  and  all  those  who,  in  what- 
ever fashion,  had  taken  part  in  the  revolt.  On  the  20th  of 
February,  162 1,  he  threw  into  prison  all  who,  trusting  to  the 
royal  mercy,  had  remained  in  the  capital,  and  this  was  the 


302  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

signal  for  his  vengeance  to  begin.  The  Calvinist  preachers 
and  the  Bohemian  Brothers  were  banished  from  the  kingdom, 
a  special  tribunal  was  set  up  in  Prague,  presided  over  by  the 
prince  of  Lichtenstein,  and  after  summary  judgment  pro- 
nounced the  executions  began. 

On  the  2 1  St  of  June,  162 1,  before  the  town-hall  of  the 
Staremesto  (Altstadt),  seven  and  twenty  of  the  principal  leaders 
were  put  to  death.  Among  them  were  Andrew  Schlick,  Vacslav 
of  Budova,  Harant  of  Polzice,  and  Jensenius,  the  rector  of 
Prague  university,  who  had  been  condemned  to  be  quartered, 
but  whose  tongue  only  was  cut  out  as  an  act  of  mercy.  Some 
had  their  heads  cut  off,  some  were  hanged ;  all  died  heroically, 
confessing  their  faith.  Their  heads  were  exposed  on  a  tower 
on  the  bridge  at  Prague.^  This  21st  of  June  was  to  Bohemia 
what,  later  on,  the  bloody  day  of  Eperjes  was  for  Hungary.  On 
the  day  following  were  published  the  punishments  decreed 
against  those  who  had  not  been  condemned  to  death  and 
the  torture ;  these  were  flogging,  banishment,  imprisonment. 
One  of  the  accused,  graciously  reprieved,  was  only  nailed  by 
the  tongue  to  a  beam  till  he  died  of  his  wounds.  The  goods 
of  all  these  men  were  confiscated  to  the  king,  his  generals  or 
favourites,  Spaniards,  Italians,  Walloons,  and  Germans.  It  was 
at  this  time  that  a  crowd  of  foreign  families  settled  in  Bohemia, 
whose  descendants  may  still  be  found  in  Austria  or  Bohemia — 
CoUoredos,  Piccolomini,  Wallis,  Gal  las,  Millesimos,  Lichten- 
stein s,  Goltz,  Trautmansdorfs,  Villanis,  Defours,  Buquois, 
Maradas,  Huertas,  and  Vasquez.  It  was  small  wonder  that 
these  intruders,  enriched  by  the  royal  munificence  at  the 
expense  of  the  Chekh  nation,  showed  little  solicitude  for  the 
rights  of  the  people  in  the  diets.  The  German  historian, 
Struve,  has  remarked  with  justice  that,  of  all  the  nobles  in  the 
world,  these  of  the  empire  of  Austria  have  the  least  right  to 

'  The  following  quatrain  was  made  on  this  execution  :  — 
"  Septeni  viginti  procerum  de  gente  bohema 
Colla  truci  gladio  denietit  una  dies. 
Si  cervix  foret  una  tibi,  gens  czechica,  credam 
Uno  momento  demetet  una  dies." 


FERDINAND'S  REVENGE.  303 

be  proud  of  their  origin;  and  this  is  especially  the  case  in 
Bohemia. 

Some  portion  of  the  confiscated  property  vras  consecrated 
to  pious  foundations  in  the  archbishopric  of  Prague,  and  in 
favour  of  the  Jesuits,  for  whom  the  emperor  had  a  special 
liking.  Father  Carafa,  one  of  their  body,  was  entrusted  with 
the  organization  of  the  movement  against  the  Reformation  in 
Bohemia.  He  has  himself  characterized  the  system  he  adopted 
in  this  frank  avowal :  "  It  is  now  agreed  that  there  is  only  one 
means  of  enlightening  the  Bohemians  and  of  bringing  them 
back  into  the  right  way,  and  that  is  persecution."  The 
members  of  the  consistory  of  the  Utraquist  Church  were  all 
banished.  Every  single  person  in  the  kingdom,  except  the 
Catholics,  had  taken  part  in  the  revolt,  so  that  terror  reigned 
over  the  whole  land.  On  the  3rd  of  February,  1622,  Ferdinand 
proposed  to  put  an  end  to  this  state  of  things  by  a  mandate 
which  was  called  a  general  pardon,  and  which  enables  us  to 
take  the  measure  of  his  mercy.  This  document  says  that  all 
those  who  had  taken  any  part  in  the  revolt  had  deserved  to 
lose  both  goods  and  life,  but  that  the  emperor,  if  they  would 
agree  to  confess  their  fault,  would  deign  to  grant  to  them  their 
lives,  and  would  only  confiscate  their  goods.  This  mock 
amnesty  was  accepted  by  seven  hundred  and  twenty-three 
lords  and  knights,  who  found  themselves,  in  consequence  of 
it,  either  half  or  wholly  ruined. 

But  Ferdinand's  great  aim  was  the  restoration  of  the 
Catholic  faith  throughout  the  kingdom.  To  this  end  the 
university  of  Prague  was  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
Utraquists  and  placed  in  those  of  the  Jesuits,  who  now  took 
possession  of  the  teaching  throughout  almost  the  whole  land. 
The  elector  of  Saxony  tried  in  vain  to  interfere  in  fovour  of 
his  co-religionists,  the  Lutherans.  In  1624,  the  Bohemian 
Brothers  were  banished  from  the  kingdom  by  an  imperial 
decree,  which  also  ordained  the  restoration  of  Catholicism, 
placing  all  the  churches  in  the  hands  of  Catholic  priests, 
many  of  whom  had   to   be   brought  in   from  foreign   lands, 


304  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

especially  Poland.  No  possible  means  of  reducing  the  people 
to  spiritual  obedience  were  neglected :  those  who  did  not 
profess  the  Catholic  religion  could  exercise  no  civil  rights 
and  were  not  even  allowed  to  practise  a  trade  ;  those  who 
were  refractory  were  denied  even  the  rites  of  marriage  and 
burial ;  those  who  neglected  the  observances  of  festivals,  who 
did  not  fast,  or  who  did  not  attend  Mass  were  punished  by 
fines.  At  the  same  time,  the  peasants  were  persecuted  by 
the  new  lords  who  owed  their  estates  to  the  bounty  of  the 
king,  and  who  were  glad  to  prove  their  gratitude  by  their  zeal. 
And  even  these  measures  were  not  enough.  In  Prague,  it 
was  found  necessary  to  banish  the  greater  number  of  the 
influential  citizens,  and,  in  the  other  royal  towns,  to  place  men 
in  the  houses  of  suspected  persons  to  see  that  they  obeyed 
the  law.  But  the  indomitable  spirit  of  the  Chekhs  rose  in 
direct  ratio  with  the  persecutions,  and  we  see,  at  Lysa,  the 
inhabitants  burning  their  town  and  emigrating  in  a  body  rather 
than  yield.  In  the  circles  of  Kourim  and  Hradec  the  peasants 
took  up  arms  and  burned  the  castles ;  troops  had  to  be  sent 
against  them,  and  order  was  established  by  means  of  executions 
and  torture.  The  detailed  account  of  the  horrible  cruelties 
then  committed  in  the  name  of  religion  is  one  of  the  most 
terrible  pictures  in  the  history  of  religion,  and  we  can  well 
understand  that  a  people  that  has  gone  through  such  an  ordeal 
can  never  forget  it. 

A  reaction  in  politics  followed  on  that  in  religion.  Im- 
mediately after  his  victory,  Ferdinand  sent  for  the  original  of 
the  royal  charters  of  Rudolf  and  the  letter  of  majesty  ;  these  he 
had  cut  to  pieces  and  thrown  into  the  fire.  He  was  determined 
that  now  that  he  had  Bohemia  in  his  power,  the  country  should 
be  reduced  once  for  all  into  servitude.  On  the  15th  of  March, 
1627,  he  published  a  new  constitution  for  the  country,  which 
began  by  proclaiming  the  right  of  the  house  of  Habsburg  to 
the  hereditary  possession  of  the  Bohemian  throne  in  either  the 
male  or  female  line.  To  the  three  estates  represented  in  the 
diets  up  to  this  time  (lords,  knights,  and  citizens)  the  sovereign 


EMIGRATION  OF  PROTESTANTS.  305 

now  added  a  fourth,  the  clergy,  which  was  to  take  rank  above 
the  other  three,  and  was  to  inckide  the  archbishop  of  Prague, 
the  primate  of  the  kingdom,  and  all  ecclesiastics  who  held 
royal  benefices.  The  diets  were  deprived  of  all  legislative 
power,  which  was  reserved  solely  for  the  king.  They  were  still 
to  have  the  right  of  consent  to  the  various  taxes,  but  were  to 
exact  no  conditions  in  return  from  the  sovereign.  They  were 
to  deliberate  on  no  matters  except  those  submitted  to  them  by 
the  king.  The  supreme  tribunal  was  deprived  of  all  legislative 
power,  and  was  to  comply  with  the  decisions  of  the  executive  ; 
trials  were  to  be  held  in  secret,  and  German  was  to  be  the 
language  used  equally  with  Chekh  in  the  law  courts  and  in  all 
public  acts  {tabulae  regni).  A  few  weeks  after  the  publication 
of  this  decree,  a  new  order  crowned  the  work  of  religious 
unity.  It  granted  six  months'  respite,  in  which  all  who  had  not 
already  accepted  the  State  religion  were  to  become  converted. 

The  emperor  came  himself  to  Prague  to  watch  over  the 
execution  of  his  orders,  to  hold  a  diet  according  to  the  new 
constitution,  and  to  have  his  son,  Ferdinand  III.,  crowned.  A 
certain  number  of  conversions  took  place,  many  of  which  were 
not  sincere,  the  pretended  Catholics  continuing  to  practise  the 
religion  dear  to  their  consciences  in  the  secrecy  of  their  own 
fireside  or  in  the  shade  of  the  forests.  But  a  great  number  of 
Chekhs  left  their  country  and  sought  liberty  of  conscience  in 
Protestant  lands.  It  is  beUeved  that  no  less  than  thirty-six 
thousand  families  emigrated  and  founded  colonies  at  Dresden, 
Pirna,  and  Meissen  in  Saxony,  and  at  Leszno  in  Poland. 

Among  these  emigrants  were  some  who  played  a  consider- 
able part  in  the  national  literature ;  as,  for  instance,  the 
historians  Habernfeld  and  Paul  Skala  of  Zhor ;  Paul  Stransky, 
the  author  of'  the  "Respublica  Bohema;"  the  theologian 
George  Holyk,  who  published  "The  Bloody  Tears  of  Bo- 
hemia" at  Wittenberg;  and  the  famous  engraver  Hollar, 
whose  works  are  still  much  sought  after. 

Moravia  was  treated  with  no  less  harshness  than  Bohemia. 
Dietrichstein,  who  was   appointed  commissary-general  of  the 

X 


306  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

province,  began  by  recalling  the  Jesuits;  the  leaders  of  the 
revolt  were  thrown  into  prison,  and  their  possessions  confis- 
cated. It  is  believed  that  the  gain  of  the  Crown  from  these 
confiscations  was  no  less  than  five  millions  of  florins.  No 
person  not  being  a  Catholic  was  allowed  to  hold  landed 
property.  Considering  the  size  of  Moravia,  emigrations  from 
that  province  were  as  numerous  as  from  Bohemia.  Among 
these  voluntary  exiles  we  ought  to  mention  the  celebrated 
teacher,  John  Amos  Komensky  (Comenius),  who  took  refuge 
first  in  Poland,  then  in  Transylvania,  and  finally  in  Holland, 
where  he  died  (1670).  His  works,  the  "  Orbis  Pictus,"  "Janua 
Linguarum  Reserata,"  and  "  Didactica  Magna,"  exercised  con- 
siderable influence  on  education,  and  are  still  looked  upon 
as  classics.  His  countryman  and  protector,  Charles  of  Zerotin, 
was  not  more  fortunate ;  he  had  also  to  leave  Moravia,  and 
took  refuge  in  Silesia.  Chekh  literature  was  looked  upon  as 
stained  by  heresy,  and  was  mercilessly  persecuted,  Chekh 
books  and  manuscripts  being  sought  for  even  in  private  houses 
and  burned  by  zealous  Catholics.  It  was  Bohemia  that  gave 
the  signal  for  that  Thirty  Years'  War  which  was  to  secure  liberty 
of  conscience  for  the  rest  of  Europe,  but  to  Bohemia  itself  it 
brought  nothing  but  ruin. 

The  Thirty  Years^  War —  Wallenstein — The  Swedes  in 
Bohemia  (i  634-1 648). 

Exhausted  as  she  was  by  the  harsh  measures  of  Ferdinand  II., 
Bohemia  was  still  called  upon  to  furnish  soldiers  for  the  armies 
of  Wallenstein.  This  celebrated  soldier  of  fortune  was  born  in 
the  north  of  the  kingdom,  of  parents  who  belonged  to  the 
community  of  the  Bohemian  Brothers,  but  he  had  been  early 
left  an  orphan,  and,  educated  by  Jesuits,  became  a  Catholic 
whilst  still  a  boy.  His  brother-in-law,  Charles  of  Zerotin, 
recommended  him  to  the  emperor  Mathias,  and  his  first 
military  experience  was  in  the  wars  against  the  Turks  and 
against  Venice.  During  the  rebellion  he  remained  faithful 
to  the  emperor,  took  part  in  the  battle  of  the  White  Mountain, 


THIRTY  YEARS'    WAR.  307 

and  also  had  a  share  in  the  defeat  of  Gabriel  Bethlen.  No  one 
profited  more  than  he  did  by  the  ruin  of  Bohemia.  In  pay- 
ment of  certain  debts  which  he  had  contracted  in  the  service 
of  the  emperor,  he  received  the  principality  of  Friedland,  which 
contained  no  less  than  nine  towns  and  fifty-seven  villages.  To 
these  he  added  a  large  number  of  confiscated  estates,  which 
he  was  able  to  buy  cheaply ;  and  out  of  these  new  possessions 
he  made,  with  the  emperor's  sanction,  what  might  almost 
be  described  as  a  petty  sovereignty,  with  the  rights  even  of 
administering  justice  and  coining  money. 

When  the  king  of  Denmark  came  to  the  help  of  the 
Protestants  in  Germany  (1626-1629),  \\'allenstein  offered  to 
raise  and  maintain  an  army  at  his  own  expense  for  the  service 
of  the  emperor.  He  collected  thirty  thousand  mercenaries, 
with  whom  he  invaded  Germany,  ravaging  the  whole  district 
through  which  he  passed.  In  return  for  these  services  he 
obtained  from  the  emperor,  first  the  duchy  of  Sagan  (Zahan) 
in  Silesia,  and  next  that  of  Mecklenburg,  with  the  title  of 
General  of  the  Baltic.  Wallenstein  inspired  the  Germans  of 
the  seventeenth  century  with  the  same  terror  that  they  had 
felt  for  Zizka  and  Procopius  in  the  fifteenth,  and  even  the 
emperor's  allies  were  terrified  by  his  success  and  asked  Ferdi- 
nand to  recall  him.  He  returned  to  Prague,  where  he  built 
a  magnificent  palace  for  himself.  At  Jicin  he  entertained 
a  court  as  brilliant  as  that  of  a  king,  being  waited  on  by 
sixty  pages,  and  going  about  with  a  body-guard.  Men  of 
family  even  quitted  the  service  of  the  emperor  to  enter  his. 
When  the  cause  of  Protestantism  was  taken  up  by  the  king 
of  Sweden,  it  was  soon  found  that  Germany  had  no  general 
able  to  cope  with  so  formidable  an  adversary,  and  the  emperor 
was  obliged  to  send  for  Wallenstein,  who  only  consented  to 
take  up  arms  on  the  distinct  understanding  that  he  was  to 
have  the  supreme  command,  both  military  and  political. 
Already  the  Saxons,  who  were  the  allies  of  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
had  entered  Bohemia  (1631)  and  reached  Prague.  A  large 
number  of  Bohemian  emigrants  had  returned  with  them,  and 


308  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

these  men  drove  the  Jesuits  out  of  the  country,  and  prepared 
to  pay  the  last  honours  to  the  Protestant  martyrs,  whose  heads 
still  remained  exposed  on  the  tower  of  the  bridge  of  Prague  ; 
when  they  had  done  this,  they  meant  to  summon  a  synod  of 
the  former  representatives  of  the  Evangelical  Churches.  But 
Wallenstein,  who  had  assembled  his  army  at  Znoimo  (Znaim) 
in  Moravia,  now  in  his  turn  entered  Bohemia,  drove  out  the 
Saxons,  and  pursued  the  Swedes  through  Bavaria  and  Saxony, 
till  Gustavus  Adolphus  fell  on  the  field  of  Liitzen,  on  the  i6th 
of  November,  1632.  Then  Wallenstein  returned  to  pass  the 
winter  in  Bohemia.  Even  while  fighting  the  emperor's  enemies 
he  had  never  ceased  to  negociate  with  them,  and  betrayed  a 
boundless  ambition  which  aimed  at  territorial  sovereignty  in 
Germany,  and  perhaps  at  the  crown  of  Bohemia.  The  sus- 
picions and  fears  of  the  court  were  at  last  excited.  He  tried 
to  clear  himself,  and  retired  to  Cheb  (Eger),  where  he  was 
assassinated  on  the  25th  of  February,  1634. 

It  is  difficult  to  know  how  far  he  was  guilty,  or  who  gave 
the  order  for  his  assassination.  What  is  certain  is  that  Ferdi- 
nand, while  he  ordered  three  thousand  masses  to  be  said  for 
the  repose  of  his  soul,  divided  the  greater  part  of  his  estates 
among  the  men  who  had  taken  part  in  the  plot  against  him — 
Gordon,  Butler,  Gallas,  CoUoredo,  and  the  Piccolomini. 
Wallenstein,  whose  tragic  end  forms  the  subject  of  one  of 
Schiller's  plays,  has  left  behind  him  a  name  which  inspires 
astonishment  and  contempt,  rather  than  admiration ;  his 
countrymen  curse  his  memory. 

In  the  year  of  Wallenstein's  death  the  Swedes  were  able 
to  reach  the  very  walls  of  Prague  (1634);  but  they  did  not 
succeed  in  entering  the  city,  and  were  soon  obliged  to  leave 
Bohemia.  The  elector  of  Saxony,  Frederick,  finally  made 
peace  with  the  emperor,  obtaining  from  him  the  province  of 
Eusatia,  which  he  held  as  a  fief  of  the  crown  of  Bohemia ; 
that  is,  in  case  of  the  extinction  of  the  electoral  family,  the 
province  was  to  revert  to  the  crown  of  St.  Vacslav.  It  has 
remained  ever  since  a  part  of  Saxony,  and  but  few  remains  of 


FERDINAND  III, 


309 


the  old  Slav  population  are  now  to  be  found  in  it ;  even  in 
the  sixteenth  century  they  had  already  become  very  largely 
Germanized. 

In  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  III.  (1637-1657)  the  Swedes 
returned  to  Bohemia  under  the  leadership  of  Banner.  This 
general  called  himself  the  avenger  of  oppressed  Protestantism 
and  treated  the  Catholics  without  mercy.  He  bombarded 
Prague,  without  however  succeeding  in  capturing  it,  and  took, 
burned,  and  pillaged  by  turns  the  towns  of  Nimburk,  Podie- 
brady,  Hradec,  and  Caslav.  The  country  was  left  to  its  fate  by 
the  emperor,  and  suffered  terribly  from  those  who,  twenty  years 
earlier,  had  been  its  allies,  and  who  now  remained  for  a  whole 
year  in  the  land  as  its  conquerors.  The  enemy  carried  off  every- 
thing that  could  be  carried  off,  and  sent  their  booty  on  boats 
down  the  Vltava  (Moldau)  and  the  Elbe;  remains  of  their  spoils 
are  still  to  be  found  in  Sweden.  In  1640,  the  imperial  army 
returned,  and  with  great  difficulty  forced  Banner  to  retire ;  but  his 
successor,  Torstenson,  soon  brought  the  Swedish  forces  back  into 
Bohemian  territory,  seized  Silesia  and  part  of  Moravia,  and 
ravaged  the  northern  parts  of  the  kingdom.  He  was  recalled 
by  the  war  which  broke  out  between  the  emperor  and  Den- 
mark, and  pursued  by  Gallas  with  the  imperial  army ;  but  Gallas 
was  defeated,  and  returned  to  Bohemia  with  only  two  thousand 
men.  After  this,  Ferdinand  himself  came  to  reside  in  Prague, 
in  order  to  organize  the  defence  in  person. 

In  the  years  1645  and  1646,  the  kingdom  was  again  invaded, 
and  the  imperial  forces  were  crushed  by  Torstenson  in  1647,  '^e^i' 
the  village  of  Jankov  in  the  circle  of  Tabor.  Wrangel,  who 
succeeded  Torstenson,  obtained  possession  of  Cheb  (Eger)  and 
marched  into  Upper  Austria.  In  164S,  the  Swedish  general 
Konigsmarck  got  into  Prague  itself  by  stratagem,  but  was 
obliged  to  retreat  before  the  desperate  resistance  of  the  inhabit- 
a;nts.  The  city  had  to  undergo  yet  another  siege,  but  the 
treaty  of  Westphalia  (1648)  saved  it. 


3IO  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Decay  of  Bohemia  in  the  Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth 
Centuries. 

No  country  suffered  so  cruelly  as  Bohemia  from  the  Thirty 
Years'  War.  That  war  left  its  towns  and  villages  destroyed  or 
half  ruined  ;  its  people  famished  and  wretched ;  its  trade  gone  ; 
its  land  uncultivated.  The  kingdom,  which  before  the  war 
had  contained  three  millions  of  inhabitants — without  including 
Lusatia,  Moravia,  and  Silesia — was  now  reduced  to  seven  or 
eight  hundred  thousand. 

Deprived  of  its  independence  by  the  new  constitution,  and 
left  to  the  mercy  of  a  rapacious  aristocracy  who  were  almost  all 
foreigners,  it  seemed  as  if  the  land  had  received  its  death-blow. 
The  sovereign  resided  entirely  in  Vienna,  and  the  executive 
power  was  exercised  by  high  civil  and  judicial  functionaries, 
who  formed  a  sort  of  council  of  regency  ;  but  all  legislative 
power  was  in  the  hands  of  the  king  alone.  The  high  chan- 
cellor lived  in  Vienna;  and  the  chancery  of  the  kingdom  of 
St.  Vacslav  sank  into  the  position  of  an  executive  department 
subordinate  to  the  royal  council.  The  chief  dignitaries  of  the 
land  were  the  president  of  the  Court  of  Appeal  and  the  chan- 
cellor. The  other  functionaries  had  merely  honorary  titles, 
with  offices  which  were  only  filled  on  the  occasion  of  a  corona- 
tion. The  finances  were  in  the  hands  of  the  Royal  Chamber  in 
Vienna,  and  the  army  was  taken  completely  out  of  the  hands 
of  the  Estates  and  became  part  of  the  imperial  forces  ;  it  is  true 
the  royal  cities  retained  their  civic  guard,  but  they  were  not  a 
military  body.  The  country  was  still  divided  into  circles,  each 
of  which  was  governed  by  two  captains,  one  chosen  from 
among  the  lords,  the  other  from  among  the  knights.  The 
towns  had  their  burgomasters  and  their  consuls,  but  they  were 
under  the  strict  surveillance  of  the  captains  and  royal  judges, 
and  the  peasants  were  serfs  who  were  under  the  rule  of  the 
lords.  This  was  the  only  one  of  all  their  ancient  privileges 
which  the  nobles  had  been  able  to  keep,-  and  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  most  of  the  estates  were  now  in  the  hands  of 


THE   CATHOLICS  IN  POWER.  3II 

foreign  adventurers,  hostile  to  the  Chekhs  and  devoted  to  the 
sovereign  whose  creatures  they  were,  and  servitude  under  these 
mercenaries  was  far  harsher  than  it  had  ever  been  under  the 
native  aristocracy. 

We  have  seen  by  what  means  the  country  had  been 
restored  to  religious  unity  ;  but  some  followers  of  the  old  sects 
were  to  be  found  long  afterwards,  and  down  to  the  very  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  the  proscribed  rites  were  secretly  cele- 
brated in  rural  districts. 

"  I  remember,"  says  the  refugee  Holyk,  "  that  once,  when 
I  was  about  seven  years  old,  I  went  with  my  parents  to  a  vast 
and  gloomy  forest.  I  remember  sitting  in  a  cart  under  the 
trees,  which  were  covered  with  snow.  Soon  some  hundreds  of 
the  faithful  joined  us,  and  began  to  build  themselves  huts  of 
branches.  Not  far  off  a  bell  was  hung  between  two  trees ;  that 
was  rung  for  divine  service,  and  I  still  remember,  as  one 
remembers  a  dream,  hearing  the  preacher  preach  and  seeing 
the  Communion  administered  to  the  crowd.  .  .  .  Watchful 
sentinels  were  stationed  at  a  corner  of  the  wood,  and  then  we 
sang  joyfully  to  the  praise  of  the  Lord.  The  Communion  took 
place  after  the  sermon  round  the  stump  of  a  tree  rudely 
squared.  Ah  !  how  sweet  and  sublime  sounded  those  holy 
hymns  in  the  depths  of  the  forest ! " 

Two  bishoprics,  those  of  Litomerice  and  Hradec,  were 
added  to  that  of  Prague,  that  the  maintenance  of  the  CathoHc 
faith  might  be  well  watched  over ;  but  the  most  active  agents 
in  Catholic  restoration  were  the  religious  orders,  and,  among 
them,  more  especially  the  Jesuits.  Bohemia  became  one  of 
the  provinces  most  under  the  influence  of  this  celebrated 
order.  As  missionaries  and  teachers  they  possessed  them- 
selves of  all  the  pulpits  and  of  public  education,  and  they 
made  bitter  war  against  heretical  books  and  dogmas  at  the 
same  time  that  they  encouraged  superstition  and  pilgrimages. 
It  was  at  this  date  that  the  legend  of  St.  John  Nepomucenus, 
the  pretended  martyr  in  the  cause  of  auricular  confession,  was 
invented  \  it  was  intended  to  supplant  the  worship  of  Master 


312  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

John  Hus,  saint  and  martyr,  in  the  minds  of  the  new  converts. 
Other  orders  of  monks,  the  Theatins,  the  Trinitarians,  and  the 
Piaristes,  settled  in  Bohemia  at  the  beginning  of  the  second 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  no  less  than  one  hundred 
and  seventy-nine  new  convents  were  built  At  last  the  court 
of  Vienna  took  alarm  at  the  rapid  growth  of  the  Jesuits,  and,  in 
order  to  lessen  their  influence,  obliged  them  to  surrender  to 
the  court  the  control  of  the  two  faculties  of  Law  and  Medicine. 

The  nationality  of  the  Chekhs  suffered  seriously  from  all 
these  trials.  The  old  inhabitants  forsook  many  of  the  large 
landed  properties,  and  the  new  lords  peopled  them  with  German 
colonists.  These  brought  with  them  their  language,  which  has 
since  remained  the  dominant  tongue  in  the  frontier  lands  to 
the  north  and  west.  The  real  German  invasion  of  Bohemia 
may  be  considered  to  have  begun  at  this  time  :  Germans  then 
occupied,  and  have  kept  down  to  our  own  times,  almost  a  third 
of  the  whole  kingdom,  and  their  language,  favoured  by  the 
Government,  became  more  and  more  that  of  the  upper  classes, 
while  the  national  literature  was  neglected.  The  greater  part 
of  the  works  of  old  Bohemian  literature  was  destroyed  during 
this  period,  either  by  the  Jesuit  missionaries  or  the  Swedes — by 
the  former  out  of  hatred  of  heresy,  by  the  latter  out  of  love  of 
pillage.  But  the  new  Catholic  literature  which  they  tried  to 
substitute  had  neither  the  vigour  nor  the  originality  of  the  old 
writings.  It  was,  however,  tolerably  extensive,  and  proves 
the  vitality  of  the  national  tongue,  which  flourishes  more  than 
ever  now  in  spite  of  all  it  has  gone  through.  The  religious 
works  published  at  this  time  serve  to  fill  up  the  gap  between 
the  brilliant  Hussite  times  and  the  literary  renaissance,  which 
was  delayed  till  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

During  this  intermediate  period,  the  history  of  Bohemia 
presents  but  few  points  of  interest ;  she  has  no  noisy  diets  at 
Pozsony  (Pressburg),  no  revolts  among  Transylvanians,  like 
Hungary.  We  need  only  mention  one  or  two  events.  In 
1680,  an  agrarian  revolt  broke  out  in  the  circle  of  Caslav.  The 
peasants  took  up  arms,  and  sent  delegates  to  Prague  to  complain 


JOSEPH  I.   AND    THE   GERMAN  PRINCES.  3  1 3 

to  the  government  of  the  tyranny  of  their  lords.  They  declared 
that  they  were  treated  more  harshly  than  if  they  were  ruled  by 
Turks  or  Tartars,  and  begged  for  some  alleviation  to  their 
misery.  The  delegates  were  thrown  into  prison,  and  two 
regiments  were  sent  against  the  revolted  peasants.  Upon  this 
the  insurrection  broke  out  worse  than  ever  in  the  circles  of 
Litomerice  and  Plzen,  and  it  was  only  put  down  with  great 
difficulty  and  at  the  cost  of  some  concessions,  which,  however, 
were  more  apparent  than  real.  In  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
succession,  Joseph  I,,  as  king  of  Bohemia,  concluded  a  treaty 
with  the  German  princes  by  which  he  undertook  to  contribute 
for  Bohemia  to  the  common  expenses  of  the  empire ;  and  in 
return  the  princes  guaranteed  the  integrity  of  his  kingdom. 
The  crown  of  Bohemia,  however,  remained  independent  of  the 
empire.  This  treaty  may  be  called  the  prologue  to  the  one 
which,  later  on,  included  Bohemia  within  the  Germanic  Con- 
federation. It  was  concluded  without  any  reference  to  the 
opinion  of  the  diet  of  the  kingdom.  Charles  VI.  paid  more 
attention  to  the  Estates  when  he  wished  to  secure .  the  crown 
for  his  daughter,  and  laid  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  before  them 
for  their  approval.  It  was  adopted  on  the  i6th  of  October, 
1720.  He  also  appointed  a  permanent  committee  of  the  diet 
in  Bohemia,  whose  business  it  was  to  administer  those  current 
affairs  which  fell  within  the  competency  of  that  assembly. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE    DISMEMBERMENT    OF    HUNGARY    (1526-1629). 

Fcrdinajid  I.  and  Szapolyai  {1^26-1^^0) — The  Ttcrks  in 
Hungary  (i 529-1562). 

The  defeat  at  Mohacs  left  a  clear  field  for  Austrian  ambition 
in  Hungary  as  well  as  in  Bohemia.  Many  of  the  patriots,  with 
Verboczy  at  their  head,  believed  that  the  right  course  was  to 
choose  a  national  king,  and,  meeting  in  a  diet  at  Tokaj,  within 
the  estates  of  Verboczy,  they  proclaimed  John  Szapolyai 
under  the  title  of  John  I.  The  Szapolyais  had  already  played 
a  prominent  part  in  Hungarian  history.  It  was  Stephen 
Szapolyai  who  captured  Vienna  in  1485,  and  who  was  after- 
wards the  lieutenant  of  Mathias  Corvinus  in  Austria.  His 
court  at  Trenczin  on  the  Vah  had  rivalled  that  of  the  king  in 
luxury,  and  in  15 12  his  daughter  Barbara  had  married 
Sigismund,  king  of  Poland.  His  son  John  was  voievode  of 
Transylvania,  and  had  rendered  signal  services  to  the  Magyar 
nobles  in  suppressing  the  peasant  rising  of  the  Kurucz.  In 
concert  with  Verboczy  and  the  archbishop  Bakracz,  he  had 
practically  governed  the  country  as  regent  during  the  reign  of 
Louis.  It  has  even  been  asserted  that  from  that  time  forward 
he  aimed  at  the  throne,  and  that  he  had  not  hastened  to  the 
help  of  Louis  because  he  wished  for  his  defeat,  knowing  that 
that  would  open  the  way  to  the  object  of  his  desires.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  he  was  crowned  in  the  month  of  November 
by  the  bishop  of  Nitra  in   Szekes  Fejervar   (1526).     In   the 


SZAPOL  YAI  IN  HUNGAR  Y.  3  I  5 

mean  time  another  diet  had  been  summoned  to  meet  at  Pozsony 
(Pressburg)  under  the  influence  of  Batory,  the  bitter  enemy  of 
Szapolyai,  and  by  it  Ferdinand  of  Austria  was  proclaimed  king. 
Hungary  therefore  had  two  kings,  but  Ferdinand  had  the 
advantage  of  having  been  crowned  with  the  crown  of  St. 
Stephen,  for  which  the  Magyar  patriots  have  always  felt  a 
superstitious  reverence. 

Szapolyai  took  every  possible  means  to  obtain  his  recogni- 
tion by  the  European  powers.  The  king  of  France,  Francis 
I.,  who  was  represented  in  Hungary  by  the  able  Rosconi,  as 
the  enemy  of  the  house  of  Austria  was  the  natural  ally  of  the 
national  king  of  Hungary ;  and  the  Bavarian  princes  were 
equally  inclined  to  sympathize  with  him,  out  of  dread  of  the 
growing  power  of  Ferdinand,  who  had  just  had  himself  crowned 
at  Prague.  Cardinal  Wolsey  also  received  the  ambassador  of 
Szapolyai  most  graciously.  But  these  expressions  of  sympathy 
were  not  supported  by  any  real  help,  and  the  troops  of 
Ferdinand  soon  defeated  those  of  Szapolyai  and  obliged  him  to 
flee  to  Poland.  A  diet  then  met  at  Buda  and  declared  him 
and  Verboczy  enemies  of  their  country.  Szapolyai  turned  for 
help  to  the  side  on  which  it  might  have  seemed  that  Hungary 
could  least  hope  for  it ;  he  sent  his  envoy  Laszka  to  the 
sultan  Soliman  at  Constantinople.  It  is  true  that  Francis  I.  had 
set  the  example  of  such  alliances,  which  were  so  httle  to  the 
credit  of  Christian  princes  ;  but  France  had  never  been  sullied 
by  an  Ottoman  invasion. 

Soliman  promised  to  come  to  the  help  of  Hungary,  if  the 
claimant  to  the  throne  would  acknowledge  his  suzerainty.  He 
deigned,  according  to  his  own  expression,  "to  grant  to  Szapol- 
yai a  kingdom  which  belonged  to  the  victor  of  Mohacs  by  all 
the  rights  of  war  and  the  sword."  At  the  same  time  Francis  I. 
signed  a  treaty  granting  to  the  king  of  Hungary  an  annual 
subsidy  of  twenty  thousand  crowns,  in  return  for  an  assurance 
that  Szapolyai,  if  he  died  without  a  male  child,  should  be 
succeeded  by  the  young  duke  of  Orleans.  During  these  nego- 
ciations  the  monk  Martinuzzi,  who   belonged   to   the   Croat 


3l6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

family  of  the  Utiesenovic,  and  was  prior  of  the  famous  Polish 
sanctuary  of  Czenstochovva,  traversed  the  whole  of  Hungary, 
endeavouring  in  all  possible  ways  to  arouse  the  enmity  of  the 
people  against  Austria,  and  to  gain  adherents  for  Szapolyai. 

In  the  spring  of  1529  Soliman  entered  Hungary,  not  this 
time  as  a  conqueror,  but  as  its  suzerain.  Szapolyai  met  him 
not  far  from  Mohacs,  and  kissed  the  hand  which  had  inflicted 
such  terrible  disasters  on  his  country.  He  allowed  the  Turks 
to  carry  off  the  holy  crown,  the  palladium  of  Hungarian 
independence,  and  agreed  that  Turkish  garrisons  should  be 
placed  in  Buda  and  Gran.  But  the  troops  whom  Soliman 
brought  to  the  help  of  Hungary  ravaged  the  country  almost  as 
badly  as  if  it  had  belonged  to  an  enemy  and  not  to  a  vassal. 
"The  Magyars,"  says  an  Hungarian  historian,  "hardly  knew 
which  to  hate  the  most,  the  Austrians  v/ho  came  to  attack 
them,  or  the  Turks  who  came  to  defend  them."  Soliman 
besieged  Vienna  unsuccessfully,  and  in  1531  a  truce  was 
concluded  between  the  two  kings  of  Hungary.  An  Itahan 
named  Gritti,  who  had  helped  to  secure  the  dangerous 
guardianship  of  Soliman  for  Szapolyai,  laid  claim  to  consider- 
able power  in  the  government  of  the  country,  and  made 
himself  detested  by  his  insolence,  his  intrigues,  and  his  cruelty. 
His  unpopularity  was  reflected  upon  Szapolyai,  who,  however, 
believed  himself  unable  to  get  on  without  this  dangerous 
supporter.  At  last  the  adventurer  was  assassinated  by  the 
Hungarians,  and  a  treaty  between  the  two  kings  put  an  end 
to  a  long  period  of  disorder.  By  this  treaty  of  Varad  {1538) 
Ferdinand  and  Charles  V.  recognized  Szapolyai  as  king  of 
Hungary ;  but  on  his  death  Ferdinand  was  to  succeed,  even 
in  case  Szapolyai  should  have  a  male  child. 

He  did  have  one,  for  shortly  after  the  conclusion  of  the 
treaty  he  married  Isabel,  the  daughter  of  Sigismund  and  queen 
Bona  Sforza,  and  by  her  had  a  son,  who  was  named  John 
Sigismund.  Szapolyai  died  a  few  months  after  the  child's 
birth,  in  1560.  When  he  had  disinherited  his  son  from  the 
Hungarian  crown  he  had  stipulated  that  the  house  of  Austria 


THE    TURKS  AS  ALLIES.  317 

should  provide  him  with  a  principality.  Perhaps  he  hoped 
that  the  Magyars  would  violate  the  treaty  he  had  concluded. 
He  appointed  Martinuzzi  Utiesenovic,  better  known  to  his 
contemporaries  by  the  name  of  Brother  George,  and  Valentine 
Torok  head  of  the  army,  as  guardians  to  his  child,  and 
Verboczy  continued  to  exert  with  the  young  queen  dowager 
the  influence  due  to  his  ability  and  legislative  skill.  These 
men  found  that  the  only  way  to  make  Hungary  independent 
of  Austria  was  by  an  alliance  with  the  Turks ;  and  Verboczy 
decided  on  again  asking  the  help  of  Soliman.  Such  an 
opportunity  for  interfering  in  the  affairs  of  Hungary  was  not 
to  be  neglected  by  the  Turkish  sovereign ;  he  recognized  the 
son  of  Szapolyai  as  king  and  marched  to  his  aid,  Ferdinand, 
who  had  found  himself  obliged  to  conquer  his  kingdom,  had 
laid  siege  to  Buda,  which  was  completely  invested  and  on  the 
point  of  surrendering  when  Soliman  arrived.  The  Austrians, 
taken  between  two  fires,  were  completely  defeated,  and  their 
general,  Roggendorf,  died  of  his  wounds. 

But  the  grand  signior  was  determined  to  be  well  paid  for 
his  assistance.  He  sent  for  the  little  king  of  Hungary,  loaded 
him  with  caresses,  and  bade  his  sons  love  him  as  if  he  were 
their  own  brother.  But  meantime  his  troops  took  possession 
of  Buda,  and  Soliman  declared,  as  soon  as  he  was  master  of 
the  place,  that  he  meant  to  occupy  it,  as  John  Sigismund  was 
not  yet  old  enough  to  be  able  to  defend  it.  He  then  assigned 
him  Transylvania  as  his  place  of  residence,  naming  him 
voievode  of  the  province.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  daughter 
of  the  king  of  Poland,  the  widow  of  John  Szapolyai,  protested 
against  this  humiliation ;  she  was  obliged  to  submit,  the  young 
prince  took  up  his  abode  in  the  castle  of  Lippa,  the  monk 
Martinuzzi  going  with  him  into  banishment.  "  From  this 
time,"  says  Sayous,  "  there  were  three  Hungaries  :  Western 
Hungary,  ruled  over  by  Ferdinand  ;  Central  Hungary,  occupied 
by  the  Turks,  and  governed  by  a  pacha  at  Buda;  and  Eastern 
Hungary,  which  was  formed  by  the  semi-independent  prin- 
cipality of  Transylvania." 


3  1 8  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGAR  Y. 

The  principal  church  in  Buda  was  changed  into  a  mosque, 
and  Verboczy  had  the  humiliating  honour  of  being  appointed 
supreme  judge  of  the  Christians  in  Buda,  the  subjects  of  the 
grand  signior.     He  died  soon  afterwards. 

Martinuzzi — The  Tiirkish  rule. 

Soliman's  success  was  not  only  an  act  of  defiance  towards 
Austria,  but  towards  the  peace  and  security  of  the  whole 
Christian  world.  Fully  conscio-us  of  this,  the  German  princes 
offered  their  help  to  Ferdinand,  and  magnates  of  the  highest 
rank  placed  themselves  at  his  service.  Martinuzzi,  who  was 
always  hard  at  work  endeavouring  to  keep  the  balance  between 
Germany  and  the  Turks,  between  the  interests  of  Hungaiy  and 
his  own  personal  ambition,  renewed  the  treaty  of  Varad  (1541), 
adding  to  it  as  one  of  its  conditions  that  Ferdinand  should 
drive  out  the  Turks.  This  was  not,  however,  of  much  use. 
A  German  expedition  which  was  sent  against  them  failed,  and 
it  was  in  vain  that  the  Magyar  diet  implored  further  help  from 
the  German  diet.  Germany  was  at  this  time  divided  by  the 
struggles  of  the  Catholics  and  Protestants,  and  had  no  time  to 
attend  to  the  troubles  of  Hungary.  Soliman  proceeded  to 
take  possession  of  Esztergom  (Gran)  and  Szekes  Fejervar 
(Stuhl  Weissenburg).  The  greater  number  of  the  Hungarians, 
finding  themselves  treated  with  comparative  gentleness  by 
their  Mussulman  conquerors,  grew  accustomed  to  their  rule, 
and  Martinuzzi,  "  that  evil-minded  and  unlucky  monk,"  as 
Ferdinand  called  him,  once  more  entered  into  alliance  with 
Soliman.  In  the  midst  of  all  these  disorders,  Martinuzzi  was 
the  real  master  of  the  country.  His  policy  of  maintaining  a 
balance  of  power  between  the  three  sovereigns,  Ferdinand, 
Szapolyai,  and  Soliman,  is  probably  to  be  ascribed  to  his 
Italian  trainmg.  At  one  time  he  oftered  to  give  up  Tran- 
sylvania to  Ferdinand,  and  so  drew  down  on  this  unhappy 
country  a  Turkish  invasion  ;  then  he  turned  against  Austria ; 
and  finally  he  persuaded  the  queen-dowager  to  renounce  the 
crown  in  Ferdinand's  favour,  and  to  lay  down  the  royal  insignia 


TRANSYL  VAN  IAN  AFFAIRS.  3  1 9 

at  the  diet  of  Kolosvar  (Klausenburg).  But  the  Austrian  king 
could  have  but  little  confidence  in  a  personage  who  knew  how 
to  play  so  many  parts  at  once.  He  sent  the  condottiero 
Castaldo  into  Transylvania  to  keep  watch  over  him,  and  with 
Castaldo  went  some  Italians  who  were  not  too  scrupulous,  and 
who  could  be  counted  on  in  any  dangerous  enterprise.  In  the 
midst  of  all  his  intrigues,  Martinuzzi  had  managed  to  become 
a  cardinal  of  the  Church  of  Rome ;  but  the  purple  could  not 
protect  him  against  the  dagger  of  these  assassins,  who  surprised 
him  in  the  castle  of  Alvinz  and  murdered  him,  striking,  it  is 
said,  sixty-six  blows.  So  ended  this  strange  man,  who  has 
been  compared,  not  without  reason,  to  Wallenstein.  Rome 
aimed  its  thunderbolts  against  the  murderers  who  had  put  an 
end  to  the  life  of  a  prince  of  the  Church  ;  but  Ferdinand,  who 
made  no  secret  of  his  part  in  the  "  quick  despatch  of  Brother 
George,"  was  able  to  obtain  absolution  for  the  murder  from 
pope  JuUus  III.  (1551). 

The  death  of  Martinuzzi  did  not  deliver  Hungary  from  the 
scourge  of  war.  Temesvar  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks,  in 
spite  of  heroic  efforts,  and  Eger  (Erlau)  defended  itself  in  vain 
with  no  less  heroism.  When  the  besieged  city  was  summoned  to 
surrender,  four  pikes  were  fixed  on  the  ramparts,  and  on  them 
was  placed  a  bier  hung  with  black,  and  this  was  the  sole 
answer  to  the  summons.  Four  times  the  Turks  assaulted  the 
brave  city,  whose  women  rivalled  the  men  in  courage ;  more 
than  eight  thousand  perished  beneath  its  walls  (1552). 

In  the  midst  of  all  these  misfortunes,  Isabella  Szapolyai, 
hopeless  of  reconquering  the  whole  of  Hungary  for  her  son, 
determined  at  least  to  secure  for  him  Transylvania.  To  this 
end  she  sought  the  help  of  Henry  II.,  king  of  France,  and  of 
the  sultan,  both  of  whom  were  interested  in  holding  the  house 
of  Austria  in  check.  Henry  II.,  invoking  the  traditions  of  the 
kings  of  France,  "  always  ready  to  lend  help  and  comfort  to  the 
afflicted,"  showed  himself  in  his  despatches  very  ready  to  aid 
the  young  prince,  and  in  the  year  1557  Christopher  Batory 
was  sent  to  Paris,  and  received  from  Henry  the  promise  of 


320  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  hand  of  one  of  his  daughters  for  John  Sigismund.  Isabella, 
however,  died  in  1559,  before  she  had  succeeded  in  making 
her  son's  position  secure. 

Meantime  the  situation  of  Hungary  properly  so  called  was 
utterly  deplorable.  Ferdinand  left  all  posts,  such  as  that  of 
the  palatine,  which  ought  to  have  been  entrusted  to  natives, 
vacant,  while  he  placed  the  government  in  the  hands  of 
Germans,  and  gave  all  military  commands  to  foreigners.  In 
1562,  he  was  obliged  to  conclude  a  treaty  with  the  Turks 
which  recognized  their  right  to  all  their  conquests  and  promised 
them  an  annual  present,  which  was  really  tribute  in  disguise. 
He  had,  however,  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  son  Maximilian 
crowned  king  of  Hungary  at  Pozsony  in  1563. 

Maximilian  (15 64-1 5 76)  continued  his  father's  policy.  The 
only  event  of  his  time  which  may  be  mentioned  with  pride  is 
the  siege  of  Sziget,  whose  heroic  defence  has  immortalized 
the  name  of  Zrinyi.  The  peace  signed  by  Soliman  and  Fer- 
dinand had  not  been  of  long  duration,  and  in  1566  Soliman 
had  attacked  the  town  of  Sziget,  situated  to  the  west  of 
Mohacs,  to  the  north  of  the  Drave.  The  Croat  Zrinyi  or 
Zrinski,  who  had  formerly  been  the  ban  of  Croatia,  commanded 
the  little  town,  which  was  surrounded  by  the  waters  of  the 
Almas  as  by  a  lake.  But  the  garrison  only  numbered  two 
thousand  five  hundred  men.  After  the  outskirts  had  been 
destroyed  by  fire,  Zrinyi  took  refuge  in  the  castle.  The  Turks 
tried  to  force  him  to  surrender,  now  by  terror,  threatening  to 
murder  his  son  George,  who  was  their  prisoner  ;  now  by  the 
most  tempting  promises.  During  the  siege,  Soliman  died  in  a 
fit  of  passion,  but  his  vizir,  Sokoli,  hid  his  death  from  the 
besiegers.  Gradually  the  castle  fell  into  ruins  under  the  fire  of 
the  artillery.  Then  Zrinyi  clothed  himself  in  his  most  magnifi- 
cent garments  and  put  gold  into  his  pockets,  **so  that  they 
should  find  something  on  his  corpse,"  and,  at  the  head  of  the 
soldiers  who  were  left  to  him,  dashed  into  the  midst  of  the 
Turks.  He  soon  found  the  death  he  sought  for.  That  of 
Soliman  was  only  made  known  to  the  troops  when  the  town 


MAXIMILIAN  II.  321 

was  in  their  hands.  Sziget,  whose  tragic  fate  has  been  the 
theme  of  both  Slav  and  Magyar  poetry,  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  Turks  down  to  1689,  and  MaximiUan  also  allowed  them 
to  get  possession  of  the  town  of  Gyula,  and  concluded  two 
treaties  with  the  new  sultan,  Selim,  which  once  more  recognized 
the  dismemberment  of  Hungary  (1568). 

The  districts  of  Hungary  which  were  under  Ottoman  rule 
became  almost  as  wretched  as  the  Servian  or  Bulgarian 
provinces.  The  orders  of  the  pachas  often  began  with  these 
words  :  "  In  the  name  of  the  Emperor,  the  All-powerful !  know 
that  if  you  disobey,  the  stake  is  ready  and  the  faggots  await 
you."  The  towns  which  were  occupied  by  the  Turks  were 
covered  with  ruins  ;  the  young  Hungarians  were  carried  off  by 
the  Janissaries  and  forced  to  enter  the  armies  of  the  grand 
signior ;  the  taxes  were  heavy,  sometimes  heavier  than  could  be 
borne,  and  they  were  levied  hap-hazard.  For  administrative 
purposes  the  country  was  divided  into  twenty-five  sandjaks, 
which  were  afterwards  formed  into  four  eyalets,  those  of  Buda, 
Eger,  Kanisza,  and  Temesvar.  The  autonomy  of  the  comitats 
was,  however,  respected,  and  in  some  matters,  especially  as 
regarded  religion,  they  enjoyed  more  liberty  than  did  the 
Austrian  parts  of  the  kingdom. 

Maximilian  recognized  not  only  the  authority  of  the  Turks, 
but  also  that  of  John  Sigismund  Szapolyai  in  Transylvania. 
John  Sigismund  renounced  the  title  of  king  and  contented 
himself  with  that  of  Most  Serene  Prince.  He  died  in  1571, 
and  with  him  the  dynasty  of  the  Szapolyais  came  to  an  end. 
The  Transylvanian  diet  elected  Stephen  Batory  to  be  his 
successor.  He  managed  to  steer  his  way  cleverly  between 
Vienna  and  Constantinople,  and  was  at  last  summoned  to 
fill  a  still  higher  position.  Poland  had  formerly  given  kings 
to  Hungary ;  in  Batory  Transylvania  gave  to  Poland  one  of 
her  most  celebrated  rulers  (1575).  The  departure  of  the 
French  king,  Henry  of  Valois,  had  left  the  throne  of  Poland 
vacant.  Maximilian  II.  and  Batory  both  became  candidates 
for  it,  but  Batory  was  elected,  and   the  Poles  consider  his 

Y 


322  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

reign  as  one  of  the  most  glorious  in  their  history.  He  took 
some  Hungarians  with  him  to  his  new  kingdom,  who  im- 
proved the  army  and  especially  the  artillery.  Maximilian 
did  not  long  survive  his  disappointment  about  Poland.  He 
had  taken  care  to  have  his  son  Rudolf  crowned  at  Pozsony 
during  his  lifetime  (1572).  We  have  already  elsewhere 
praised  the  tolerant  and  liberal  spirit  of  Maximilian,  but  he 
was  never  popular  in  the  kingdom  which  he  proved  himself 
so  incapable  of  defending,  and  the  Magyars  never  forgave  his 
want  of  knowledge  of  their  language.  A  conspiracy  was  at 
one  time  formed  to  dethrone  him  ;  it  failed,  but  its  authors 
were  only  condemned  to  banishment.  Compared  with  his 
immediate  successor,  Maximilian  was  certainly  one  of  the  best 
of  the  sovereigns  who  reigned  over  mutilated  Hungary. 

The  Reformation  in  Hungary — Rudolf  {x'-^'j 6-1612). 

The  condition  of  Austrian  Hungary  during  this  period  was 
scarcely  better  than  that  of  Turkish  Hungary.  The  whole 
country  was  in  a  state  of  continual  warfare,  and,  the  national 
militia  being  insufficient,  the  Austrian  prince  covered  the  whole 
land  with  foreign  troops,  Germans,  Italians,  and  Spaniards,  who 
were  often  as  oppressive  as  any  Turks.  Each  coviitat  was 
responsible  for  raising  soldiers  for  the  national  defence,  and  we 
have  seen  how  these  native  troops,  the  Honveds,  distinguished 
themselves  at  the  sieges  of  Eger  and  Sziget. 

The  most  prominent  event  of  the  time  is  the  spread  of  the 
Reformation  among  the  Magyars.  Notwithstanding  the  political 
antagonism  which  existed  between  Hungary  and  Bohemia,  at 
several  periods  Hussitism  had  penetrated  into  the  land  of 
St.  Stephen,  and  had  prepared  men's  minds  for  new  doctrines. 
The  causes  which  predisposed  the  Catholics  to  the  Reforma- 
tion were  the  same  here  as  elsewhere.  The  ignorance  of  the 
clergy  was  gross,  and  though  the  Hungarians,  whose  minds 
were  less  original  and  less  cultivated  than  those  of  the  Bo- 
hemians and  Germans,  had  not  sufficient,  energy  to  produce 
a  reformation  of  themselves,  they  were  sufficiently  yielding  and 


REFORMATION  IN  HUNGARY.  323 

docile  to  accept  it  as  soon  as  it  reached  the  frontiers  of  their 
kingdom.  Besides,  the  German  colonies  of  Transylvania 
formed  a  sort  of  half-way  ground  between  Germany  and 
Hungary ;  and  here  we  find  the  diet,  as  early  as  the  beginning 
of  Louis's  reign,  a  year  before  the  battle  of  Mohacs  (1525), 
at  the  instance  of  the  terrified  clergy,  condemning  all  heretics 
to  be  burned.  The  partition  of  Hungary  could  not  fail  to 
favour  the  spread  of  the  new  doctynes.  The  various  masters 
who  divided  the  land  amongsf  them  could  not  secure  that 
unity  of  action  which  renders  persecution  successful  in  its 
struggle  against  heresy.  Pastor  Honter  in  Transylvania  had 
early  helped  on  the  work  by  schools  and  books,  while  in 
Hungary  itself,  Devay,  who  had  known  Luther  at  Wittenburg, 
was  the  first  reformer.  He  translated  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul 
into  Magyar.  Some  of  the  nobles  accepted  the  new  doctrines, 
and  from  the  year  1548  the  diets  ceased  to  pass  persecuting 
laws.  The  Evangelical  Church  organized  itself  on  the  basis 
of  the  Augsburg  confession,  without  keeping  strictly  to  it  on 
all  points.  But  it  was  Calvinism  which  mostly  took  root  in  the 
centre  of  Hungary  along  the  valley  of  the  Tisza  (Theiss).  A 
proverb  says,  "  Calvitiista  hit,  Magyar  hit'" — "The  Calvinistic 
faith  is  the  true  Magyar  faith ; "  for  the  Lutheran  doctrines 
came  from  Germany,  and,  therefore,  were  suspected  by  patriots. 
The  new  sect  established  itself  at  Debreczen,  and  its  chief 
was  pastor  Juhasz,  who,  according  to  a  fashion  of  the  time, 
changed  his  name  for  the  pseudo-Greek  Melius  (or  shepherd). 
He  translated  the  Scriptures  from  the  Greek  and  Hebrew, 
composed  hymns,  and  corresponded  with  Theodore  Beza.  In 
1567,  the  Synod  of  Debreczen  drew  up  the  creed  of  the 
Magyar  Calvinistic  Church  in  seventy-four  articles.  John  Hus 
had  restored  Chekh  prose ;  Luther,  German  prose ;  and  the 
Hungarian  reformers,  Devay,  Erdosi  (Johannes  Sylvester 
Pannonicus),  Caspar  Heltai,  and  Karoly,  rendered  the  same 
service  to  their  country.  Protestantism  became  a  new  power 
in  Hungary,  ready  to  confront  the  Catholic  and  Ultramontane 
dynasty. 


324  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Rudolf  II.  (1576-161 2)  did  nothing  to  increase  the  popu- 
larity of  the  house  of  Austria.  At  the  beginning  of  his  reign 
(1582)  the  diet  brought  forward  some  of  the  grievances  of  the 
countr\-.  They  demanded  that  he  should  pledge  himself  to 
maintain  their  rights,  and  expressed  a  wish  that  the  relations 
with  Turkey  should  be  regulated  by  native  ambassadors,  and 
not  by  Germans  or  Italians,  who  were  strangers  to  the  interests 
of  Hungary ;  and  Rudolf  ^vas  so  much  annoyed  by  this  that 
he  left  the  country  and  never  set  foot  in  it  again. 

For  four  years  Rudolf  never  once  summoned  the  diet,  and 
all  this  time  the  office  of  palatine  remained  vacant.  The 
friend  of  occult  arts  and  sciences,  and  steeped  in  the  doctrines 
of  absolutism,  he  had  no  love  for  that  uncivilized  Hungary 
which  he  found  so  independent,  and  never  appealed  to  it 
except  for  money.  One  of  the  Venetian  ambassadors  has 
thus  recorded  his  impression  of  the  condition  of  the  kingdom  : 
"  The  Hungarians  detest  the  house  of  Austria :  they  consider 
that  they  are  not  only  subject  to  her,  but  that  they  are  also 
despised  by  her,  as  she  governs  them  by  means  of  the  Germans, 
who  are  her  natural  enemies."  The  wars  with  the  Turks  con- 
tinued, and,  in  order  to  keep  back  the  Mussulmans,  the 
emperor  granted  certain  lands  between  the  Unna  and  the 
Kulpa  to  Servian  colonists,  on  condition  that  they  should 
defend  the  frontier.  These  lands  were  lying  waste — con- 
temporaries call  them  desertu7n  prinmni,  desertum  secundum 
— they  were  thus  repeopled  by  men  who  were  both  agricul- 
turists and  warriors,  and  this  is  the  origin  of  the  organization 
of  the  "  military  frontiers,"  which  was  retained  down  to  the 
year  1881.^ 

In  1577,  the  fortress  of  Karlovac  (Karlstadt)  was  constructed 
to  defend  Croatia  from  Mussulman  invasions.  In  1592,  Hassan, 
the  pacha  of  Bosnia,  was  defeated  under  the  walls  of  Sisek, 
and,  in  1595,  the  town  of  Esztergom  (Gran)  was  captured  by 
the  combined  troops  of  the  empire  and  Hungary.  But  these 
successes  were  unfortunately  balanced  by  the  loss  of  Eger. 
'  See  Z^j  Serbes  de  Hotigroie,  by  M.  Picot. 


TREATY   WITH  THE    TURKS.  325 

This  town  had  been  impregnable  when  defended  by  native 
soldiers,  but  now  that  it  was  garrisoned  for  the  most  part  by 
Walloon  mercenaries,  it  capitulated.  A  few  days  after  its  fall, 
a  terrible  battle  took  place  at  Mezo  Kereztes  in  Transylvania, 
between  the  army  of  Mahomet  III.  and  that  of  the  archduke 
Maximilian,  assisted  by  the  troops  of  Sigismund  Batory.  Raab 
(Gyor)  was  retaken  by  Adolphus  of  Schwarzenberg  in  1597. 
When  the  house  of  Austria  had  summoned  Walloons  and 
Spaniards  to  its  aid,  the  Turks  had  brought  Tartars,  and  the 
Magyar  nation  suffered  equally  from  friends  and  foes.  The 
last  event  of  any  importance  in  this  war  was  the  check  received 
by  the  imperial  army  before  Kanisza  in  1601 ;  the  archduke 
Ferdinand  lost  all  his  artillery  under  the  walls  of  this  town, 
and  a  large  number  of  his  troops  were  taken  prisoner  and 
beheaded.  But  the  thirst  for  conquest  among  the  Turks  had 
gradually  diminished,  and  in  160 1  they  themselves  proposed 
peace.  The  treaty  of  Sitvatorok  shows  clearly  how  weary  they 
were  of  fighting.  They  demand  from  the  Christians  neither 
humiliating  concessions  nor  any  annual  tribute ;  they  only 
stipulate  that  they  shall  keep  the  lands  they  have  conquered, 
and  from  this  time  onward  they  turn  all  their  attention  to  the 
side  of  Transylvania. 

Tlie  Transylvanian  Princes — Gabriel  Bethlcn  (161 3- 1629). 

It  was  in  this  Eastern  Hungary  with  its  three  languages 
(Magyar,  German,  and  Wallachian)  that  the  destinies  of  the 
fatherland  and  the  great  Magyar  Orszag  (country)  were  to  be 
decided.  From  157 1  to  1575,  the  principality  was  ably  governed 
by  Stephen  Batory,  but  he  prepared  the  way  for  serious  religious 
troubles  by  the  introduction  of  the  Jesuits.  His  successors 
were  Christopher  Batory  (1575-1581)  and  Sigismund  Batory 
(1581-1599).  The  latter,  a  feeble  prince  who  was  entirely  under 
the  influence  of  the  Jesuits,  the  fast  friends  of  the  emperor,  con- 
sented to  cede  Transylvania  to  Rudolf,  in  exchange  for  the 
principalities   of  Oppol  (Oppeln)   and  of   Ratibor   in   Silesia 


326  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY, 

(1597).  He  afterwards  revoked  this  decision  on  the  per- 
suasion of  his  uncle,  cardinal  Andrew  Batory,  and  had  in 
consequence  to  defend  himself  against  both  the  imperial  array 
and  that  of  Michael,  voievode  of  Wallachia,  who  hoped  to 
obtain  a  grant  of  the  principality  from  tlie  Turks.  Tired  of 
war,  Sigisraund  at  last  abdicated  and  retired  to  Prague,  where 
he  died  in  16 13.  Transylvania  was  then  invaded  by  the 
imperialists,  and  was  for  a  time  really  governed  by  general 
Basta,  whose  rule  is  still  remembered  by  the  people  as  one 
of  terrible  oppression,  and  the  Protestants,  whom  the  Mussul- 
mans had  left  in  peace,  were  systematically  persecuted.  The 
exactions  of  the  Austrians  were  such  as  to  make  men  even 
desire  the  return  of  the  Turks.  Such  tyranny  was  sure  to 
excite  a  terrible  reaction.  The  Transylvanians  rose  in  revolt 
together  with  the  Magyars  of  Upper  Hungary,  who  were  ex- 
asperated by  the  brutality  of  Belgiojoso,  the  imperial  lieutenant. 
All  these  foreign  adventurers  treated  the  kingdom  like  a  con- 
quered land,  and  made  the  Austrian  dynasty  detested.  The 
Transylvanians  chose  for  their  leader  Stephen  Bocskai,  one 
of  the  great  nobles,  who  was  full  of  daring  and  an  able  soldier, 
and  he  was  seconded  by  the  youth  Gabriel  Bethlen.  The 
imperialists  were  defeated  before  Kasso  (Kaschau),  and  that 
town  opened  its  gates  to  Bocskai.  At  the  diet  of  Szerencs, 
Bocskai  was  proclaimed  prince  or  voievode  of  Transylvania. 
The  new  voievode  ruled  the  land  from  1604  to  1606,  and  showed 
himself  as  able  as  a  diplomatist  as  he  was  skilful  as  a  general. 
He  entered  into  negociations  with  the  Turks,  and  secured  the 
alliance  of  the  sultan,  Achmet  H.,  who  even  offered  to  recog- 
nize him  as  king  of  the  whole  of  Hungary.  Bocskai  had 
sufficient  prudence  to  decline  this  honour,  and  in  1606,  by 
the  peace  of  Vienna,  he  obtained  the  recognition  of  his  sove- 
reignty, not  only  over  Transylvania,  but  over  part  of  Northern 
Hungary ;  if  he  died  without  heirs  these  provinces  were  to 
return  to  the  house  of  Austria.  The  peace  of  Vienna  also 
granted  certain  rights  to  Hungary,  among  them  liberty  of  con- 
science   for   the    Protestants,    and   a   stipulation   that,  in    the 


GABRIEL  £  A  TORY.  327 

absence  of  the  king,  an  archduke  should  reside  in  the  king- 
dom ;  it  also  promised  that  military  posts  and  public  offices 
should  be  filled  only  by  natives. 

Of  the  three  masters  who  then  divided  Hungary  amongst 
them,  Bocskai  was  the  most  powerful.  The  kingdom  of  St. 
Stephen,  with  Transylvania,  Croatia,  Slavonia,  and  Dalmatia, 
comprised  5163  square  miles;  of  these  Austria  possessed 
1222,  the  Porte  1859,  and  Bocskai  2082. 

The  treaty  of  Vienna  was  due  to  the  efforts  of  the  archduke 
Mathias,  who  endeavoured  with  the  whole  force  of  his  energy 
to  make  up  for  the  indolence  of  his  brother  Rudolf  When 
he  became  governor  of  Austrian  Hungary  he  tried  to  put  an 
end  to  the  discontent  of  the  nation,  but  he  had  not  succeeded 
in  reannexing  Transylvania,  when  the  sudden  death  of  Bocskai 
in  1606  left  it  without  a  ruler.  The  diet  met  at  Kolosvar 
(Klausenburg),  and  elected  first  Sigismund  Rakoczy,  and  after- 
wards, when  Rakoczy  voluntarily  renounced  the  princely  title, 
Gabriel  Batory  (1608). 

In  the  same  year,  Mathias  obliged  his  brother  to  cede  Austria 
and  Hungary  to  him,  but  the  hopes  which  had  been  raised  by 
his  efforts  as  archduke  were  not  all  fulfilled.  He  did,  however, 
give  the  kingdom  once  more  its  higfi  officer,  the  palatine,  and 
undertook  that  this  important  post  should  never  again  be  left 
vacant;  he  also  gave  back  the  sacred  crown,  withdrew  the 
foreign  garrisons,  and  granted  liberty  of  conscience.  In  the 
absence  of  the  king,  the  royal  authority  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  palatine,  the  king's  council,  and  a  treasurer.  These  con- 
cessions soothed  the  Hungarians,  but  they  could  not  make 
them  forget  all  their  other  grievances.  Henry  IV.  of  France 
recognized  the  existence  of  these  grievances,  and  in  the  political 
plans  he  had  formed,  and  which  death  prevented  him  from 
carrying  into  execution,  Hungary  had  its  place.  According  to 
Sully,  he  wished  "that  the  Hungarians  should  have  their  old 
franchises  restored  to  them,  the  right  of  themselves  electing 
their  prince,  or  of  choosing  any  other  form  or  mode  of  govern- 
ment which  they  should  judge  convenient." 


328  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRIA   HUNGARY. 

After  the  coronation  of  Mathias,  the  Protestant  Thurzo  was 
elected  palatine.      This  election  was  a  great  triumph  for  re- 
ligious toleration,  but  it  was   extremely  difficult  to  maintain 
such  toleration  in  the  face  of  the  traditions,  and  in  opposition 
to  the  usual  advisers  of  the  house  of  Austria.     There  were 
besides  many  decided  opponents  of  the  Reformation  among 
the  Hungarians  themselves,  and  at  their  head  cardinal  Paz- 
many,  a  fiery  prelate,  clever  and  eloquent,  who  had  been  edu- 
cated by  the  Jesuits,  and  who  succeeded  in  restoring  to  the 
Catholic  Church  some  of  the  highest  families  in  the  kingdom. 
For   one   moment,    after   the   tragic    death   of    the  voievode 
Batory,    whose    violence    had    provoked    the    intervention    of 
Austria,  Mathias  may  have  hoped  to  reconquer  Transylvania 
(1613);  but  the  Transylvanians  cared  almost  more  for  liberty 
of  conscience  than  for  political  independence,  and  they  pro- 
ceeded to  elect  Gabriel  Bethlen,  the  Protestant  (1613-1629).! 
This  enlightened  prince  was  able  to  restore  toleration  in  re- 
ligious matters,  discipline  in  the  army,  and  order  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  country.     He  has  been  compared,  with  reason,  to 
Mathias  Corvinus.     Like  that  great  king,  he  cared  for  art,  and 
was  himself  a  well-educated  man.     He  constantly  endeavoured 
to  hold  the  balance  even  between  the  Protestants  and  Catholics, 
as  well  as  between  the  Austrians  and  the  Turks,     When  Fer- 
dinand II,  ascended  the  throne  (1619-1637),  and  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  broke  out,  Bethlen  understood  how  seriously  Pro- 
testant interests  were  threatened,  and  how  possible  it  was  that 
the  blow  which  was  aimed  at  Bohemia  might  reach  the  Magyar 
nation.     The  emperor  first  tried  to  secure  the  voievode's  neu- 
trality  by   sending   to    him   Nicholas    Esterhazy,    one   of  the 
ablest   diplomatists  and  best   patriots    of  Austrian   Hungary, 
Esterhazy  was  one  of  those  who,  like  Francis  Deak  in  later 
times,  frankly  accepted  the  Habsburg  dynasty,  and  only  asked 
that,  in  return  for  loyal  obedience,  it  should  respect  the  wishes 

'  Also  known  by  the  name  of  Bethlen  Gabor.  Gabor  is  the  Magyar 
form  of  Gabriel.  The  Hungarians  place  the  baptismal  name  after  the 
surname. 


GABRIEL  BETHLEN.  329 

of  the  nation.  A  sincere  but  liberal-minded  Catholic,  he  may- 
be said  to  have  stood  half-way  between  Cardinal  Pazmany  and 
the  Protestant  Bethlen.  Gabriel  hesitated  for  some  time,  but 
finally  decided  to  take  the  side  of  Bohemia.  He  published  a 
manifesto,  entitled  the  "  Complaint  of  Hungary,"  which  he 
sent  all  over  the  country,  and  then  convoked  a  general  diet  of 
all  the  comitats.  This  assembly  met  at  Kasso,  and  named 
him  governor  and  George  Rakoczy  captain-general,  placing 
the  latter  at  the  head  of  all  the  comitats.  Bethlen  sent  a 
body  of  ten  thousand  auxilliaries  to  count  Thurn,  and  the 
diet,  which  met  under  his  protection  at  Pozsony,  decided  to 
go  to  the  help  of  Bohemia.  On  the  25th  of  August,  1620, 
about  the  same  time  that  Bohemia  was  choosing  the  elector 
palatine  for  her  king,  this  diet  proclaimed  Bethlen  king  of 
Hungary.  But,  unfortunately,  neither  France  nor  Poland  was 
ready  to  come  forward  to  the  help  of  the  new  sovereign,  and 
even  the  Turks  seemed  no  longer  to  interest  themselves  in 
Hungarian  affairs.  The  defeat  of  the  Chekhs  at  the  White 
Mountain  destroyed  the  hopes  of  Transylvania,  and  Bethlen 
was  obliged  to  come  to  terms  with  Ferdinand.  By  the  peace 
of  Nikolsburg,  he  renounced  the  crown  of  Hungary  ;  but  he 
kept,  together  with  Transylvania,  the  government  of  the  seven 
northern  comitats,  Abauj,  Bereg,  Zemplitt,  Borsod,  Szabolcs, 
Ugocsa,  and  Szatmar,  the  fortified  towns  of  Kasso,  Munkacs, 
and  Tokaj,  and  the  duchies  of  Oppeln  and  Ratibor.  Besides 
this,  he  received  the  title  of  prince  of  the  empire,  and  an 
annual  subsidy  of  fifty  thousand  florins. 

But  this  treaty  was  only  temporary,  for  Bethlen  was  de- 
termined not  to  remain  long  in  the  position  thus  assigned  to 
him.  Pie  hoped  to  be  able  to  find  allies  somewhere,  and 
entered  into  negociations  with  Holland,  Englaad,  and  Venice, 
through  their  ambassadors  at  Constantinople.  At  the  same 
time  he  strengthened  his  connection  with  Northern  Germany, 
and  married  the  princess  Catherine  of  Brandenburg.  He  had 
a  large  number  of  diplomatists  at  work  under  his  orders,  and 
from  1623  to  1629  he  was  negociating  with  the  French  am* 


330  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

bassador  at  Constantinople,  M.  de  Cesy,  who  encouraged  him 
to  march  against  Austria.  But  all  his  efforts,  even  an  attempted 
campaign  against  Wallenstein,  came  to  nothing,  and  Bethlen 
died  in  1629,  without  having  succeeded  in  altering  any  of  the 
stipulations  of  the  peace  of  Nikolsburg. 


CHAPTER   XX. 

HUNGARY  IN    REVOLT    AND    HUNGARY    RECONCILED 
(1629-1740). 

The  Rakoczy  Family  in  Transylvania — Leopold  I.  in  Hungary 
(1629-1705). 

George  Rakoczy  was  chosen  to  succeed  Bethlen,  notwith- 
standing that  the  claims  of  the  princess-dowager,  Catherine  of 
Brandenburg,  were  supported  by  the  courts  of  France,  Holland, 
Sweden,  and  Brandenburg.  During  the  Swedish  period  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,  Transylvania  was  at  peace,  for  the  policy 
of  George  Rakoczy  was  pacific.  In  the  kingdom  of  Hungary 
the  palatine  Esterhazy  endeavoured  to  maintain  public  liberty 
against  the  encroachments  of  the  sovereign,  but  he  was  unable 
to  prevent  the  establishment  of  the  Jesuits  in  the  kingdom  by 
cardinal  Pazmany.  They  founded  a  university  at  Trnava 
(Tyrnau,  Nagy  Szombat),  and  made  themselves  the  educators 
of  the  young  Magyar  Catholics.  In  1637,  Ferdinand  II.  was 
succeeded  by  Ferdinand  III.  In  his  reign,  the  discontent  of 
the  Hungarian  Protestants  was  increased  by  the  constant 
violations  of  the  treaty  of  Vienna.  George  Rakozcy  believed 
that  the  time  for  a  successful  attack  on  Austria  had  come,  and 
in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  Esterhazy,  who  implored  him  not 
to  weaken  the  power  of  Hungary,  which  was  all  needed  for 
resistance  against  the  Turks,  he  entered  into  negociations  with 
France  and  Sweden.  He  received  from  them  the  promise  of  a 
subsidy  of  one  hundred  thousand  crowns  a  year,  and  religious 


332  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

liberty  and  political  independence  for  Hungary  and  Transyl- 
vania, as  the  price  of  his  co-operation.  He  began  hostilities  in 
1644,  took  Kasso,  and  advanced  as  far  as  Eperijes,  where  he 
issued  a  proclamation  calling  on  all  the  Hungarians  to  join 
him.  But  here  he  was  stopped  by  the  imperial  troops,  and 
forced  to  fall  back  on  his  own  dominions.  When  the  nego- 
ciations  which  preceded  the  peace  of  Westphalia  began,  he  was 
not  forgotten,  and  the  French  diplomatists  offered  to  represent 
his  interests.  He  would  not,  however,  wait  for  the  conclusion 
of  the  peace,  but  signed  a  treaty  on  his  own  account,  by  which 
the  emperor  ceded  to  him  the  northern  comitais,  which  Gabriel 
Bethlen  had  already  possessed,  and  the  fortresses  of  Tokaj  and 
Regetz  (peace  of  Linz,  1645). 

Transylvania  was  prosperous  under  this  prince,  who 
introduced  the  reformed  religion  into  his  court  and  army.  He 
was  succeeded  by  his  son,  George  Rakoczy  II.  (i 648-1 660), 
whose  ambition  seriously  compromised  the  fate  of  the  princi- 
pality. He  hoped  that  Sweden  would  help  him,  as  it  had 
helped  his  predecessor,  Batory,  to  obtain  the  throne  of  Poland. 
But  the  Porte  was  not  prepared  to  allow  so  powerful  a  state  to 
be  formed  on  its  frontiers,  and  the  only  result  was  a  series  of 
wars  and  invasions,  in  which  Transylvania  was  cruelly  ravaged 
and  George  lost  his  life  (1660).  He  was  succeeded  by  John 
Kemenyi,  one  of  his  principal  Heutenants  and  one  of  the  best 
writers  of  his  day,  who  tried  with  the  help  of  the  emperor  to 
drive  back  the  Turks.  He  also  was  killed  (1662),  and  the 
Transylvanians,  quite  as  much  alarmed  by  the  imperial  alliance 
as  by  the  ravages  of  the  Mussulmans,  on  his  death  accepted 
a  voievode  imposed  upon  them  by  the  Porte,  Michael  Apafy, 
who  ruled  from  1662  to  1689. 

The  reign  of  Leopold  I.  (1657-1705)  was  a  most  disastrous 
reign  for  Hungary.  On  the  coronation  of  this  prince,  the  diet 
had  insisted  that  the  office  of  palatine  should  be  restored, 
and  all  foreign  troops  should  be  banished  from  the  kingdom  ; 
the  Protestants  had  also  demanded  that  they  should  have  that 
liberty  of  conscience  which  had  been  so  often  violated.     For 


LEOPOLD  /.    IN  HUNGARY.  333 

a  short  time  in  1664  the  invasion  by  the  Turks  under  the  grand 
vizir  Kiuprili  united  all  the  forces  of  the  empire  and  the 
kingdom.  The  imperial  army  was  commanded  by  the 
celebrated  Montecuculli,  the  worthy  adversary  of  Turenne,  and 
the  Hungarians  by  Zrinyi,  a  descendant  of  the  hero  of  Szigeth. 
Zrinyi  performed  prodigies  of  knightly  valour,  while  Monte- 
cuculli was  an  able  representative  of  that  school  of  great 
tacticians  which  was  formed  by  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  The 
battle  of  St.  Gothard,  which  is  called  by  the  Magyars  the  battle 
of  Kormend,  took  place  on  the  ist  of  August,  1664,  on 
Hungarian  soil,  and  the  Turks,  to  the  great  joy  of  Christendom, 
suffered  a  terrible  defeat.  The  French  auxiliaries,  under  La 
Feuillade  and  Coligny,  distinguished  themselves  greatly  in  the 
fight.  But  this  victory  brought  but  little  profit  to  Hungary,  as 
the  peace  which  was  concluded  almost  immediately  after  it  at 
Vasvar  did  not  free  the  least  particle  of  Magyar  soil.  Indeed, 
the  Turks  obtained  possession  of  several  fresh  fortresses,  among 
them  Nagy  Vaxad  (Great  Varadin) ;  and  it  seemed  as  if  the 
treaty  had  been  drawn  up  in  the  interests  of  Austria  and  Turkey, 
at  the  expense  of  those  of  Hungary.  A  truce  for  twenty  years 
was  agreed  upon. 

The  emperor  Leopold  was  inspired  by  a  double  fanaticism 
for  an  intolerant  creed  and  for  absolute  power.  Led  by  the 
Jesuits,  he  had  determined  to  destroy  at  one  and  the  same  time 
the  reformed  religion  and  the  liberties  of  the  kingdom.  He 
first  of  all  tried  to  suppress  the  diet,  and  to  substitute  for  it  an 
assembly  of  the  great  lords  and  prelates  at  Vienna ;  but  even 
among  these  men  he  discovered  a  spirit  of  independence  which 
thwarted  his  plans.  Can  it  be  true  that  he  one  day  pronounced 
the  dreadful  words,  "  Faciam  Hungariam  captivam,  postea 
mendicarn,  deinde  catholicam "  ?  Such  historical  sayings  are 
always  to  be  distrusted,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  men 
who  surrounded  Leopold  never  disguised  their  hatred  of  the 
nation  which  so  obstinately  refused  to  yield.  "  Gens  dura  et 
pervicax,  non  nisi  atrocibus  suppliciis,  et  quae  alibi  saeva 
viderentur,  coerceretur,''  wrote  the  Jesuit  Wagner,  the  historian 


334  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  Leopold  the  Great.  Against  this  double  tyranny  Hungary 
could  only  hope  for  help  in  the  support  of  foreign  lands.  As 
early  as  1665,  Francis  Frankopan,  a  Croat  magnate  who  was 
allied  to  the  illustrious  family  of  Zrinyi,  addressed  a  memorial 
to  the  prince  elector  of  Maintz,  in  which  he  said,  "  The 
kingdom  of  Hungary  has  reached  such  a  state  of  ruin  and 
misery,  that  if  God  does  not  incite  Christian  princes  to  defend 
it,  all  is  over  with  this  bulwark  of  Christendom  and  of  all 
lands.  .  .  .  The  upper  comitats  of  Hungary  have  fallen  into 
such  a  depth  of  despair  that  they  see  no  means  of  safety  except 
in  placing  themselves  under  the  protection  of  the  Turks.  .  .  . 
The  Hungarians,  from  national  antipathy,  have  a  horror  of 
Turkish  rule.  .  .  .  And  yet  extreme  necessity  has  now  reduced 
them  to  thoughts  like  these."  Peter  Vesselenyi,  Peter  Zrinyi, 
the  brother  of  the  general,  Nadasdy,  and  Frankopan  put 
themselves  in  communication  with  the  French  ambassador 
Gremonville  at  Vienna,  but  Louis  XIV.  cared  too  much  for 
the  rights  of  princes  to  support  revolt.  Apafy  remained 
indifferent;  but  Zrinyi  and  Frankopan  tried  to  stir  up  Hungary, 
and  succeeded  in  gathering  some  troops  together.  They  were 
soon,  however,  induced  to  lay  down  their  arms  on  the  promise 
of  a  full  and  complete  amnesty.  Arrested  together  with  their 
accomplice  Nadasdy,  they  were  thrown  into  prison,  and  then, 
contrary  to  the  law,  were  tried  outside  Hungarian  territory, 
Nadasdy  at  Vienna,  Zrinyi  and  Frankopan  at  Wiener-Neustadt, 
and  were  condemned  to  death,  the  emperor,  "  out  of  his  royal 
grace  and  favour,"  sparing  them  the  cutting  off  of  the  right 
hand  (April  30,  1671). 

The  execution  of  the  three  counts  was  the  signal  for 
atrocious  persecutions  of  both  patriots  and  Protestants. 
Caspar  Ampringen,  a  German,  was  made  supreme  commander 
of  the  country  and  invested  with  special  powers.  The  primate 
Szelpcsenyi,  who  cared  more  for  Catholicism  than  for  his 
country,  set  to  work  to  prosecute  the  Protestants,  many  of 
whom  were  sent  into  exile,  condemned  to  hard  labour,  or  sold 
to  the  viceroy  of  Naples  to  row  in  his  galleys.    But  the  Magyar 


EMERICH  TOKO  LI.  335 

spirit  of  independence  was  not  crushed  by  all  this  severity  ; 
tlie  Kurucz  were  heard  of  again,  and  Louis  XIV.,  who  was  at 
war  with  Austria,  at  last  decided  to  help  the  malcontents,  and 
sent  them  men  and  money  through  the  French  ambassador  in 
Poland.  Emerich  Tokoli  was  the  formidable  leader  of  the 
insurrection.  He  was  the  son  of  that  Count  TokdU  who  had 
been  the  friend  of  the  three  counts  beheaded  in  167 1,  had 
taken  part  in  their  enterprise,  and  had  been  killed  in  battle. 
Emerich  Tokoli  had  married  brave  Helen  Zrinyi,  the  widow  of 
(ieorge  Rakoczy  H. ;  his  banner  bore  the  motto  ^''  Pro  arts  et 
focis  ;  "  he  coined  money  bearing  his  own  effigy  and  ruled  with 
real  sovereign  power.  He  succeeded  in  getting  together  an 
army  which  vigorously  pushed  its  way  into  Moravia.  Meantime 
the  primate  Szelpcsenyi  had  tried  to  bring  about  a  peace  at 
tlie  diet  of  Pozsony  in  i68r,  and  had  secured  the  nomination 
of  a  palatine  and  the  restoration  of  the  constitution.  But 
Tokoli  was  not  satisfied  with  these  concessions  ;  his  aim  was 
to  become  the  sovereign  of  an  independent  Hungary. 

He  hoped  to  find  allies  among  the  Turks,  vvho  were  at  this 
time  marching  against  Vienna,  and  with  this  end  in  view  went 
to  meet  the  grand  vizir,  Kara  Mustapha.  He  invested  Pozsony 
while  the  Turks  besieged  the  Austrian  capital.  But  the  defeat 
of  the  Turks  by  Sobieski  was  also  a  defeat  for  him  whom  they 
called  the  king  of  the  Kurucz,  and  after  it  he  found  himself 
reduced  to  guerilla  warfare.  The  victory  over  the  Turks  was 
followed  by  the  capture  of  some  of  the  chief  Magyar  towns, 
the  imperial  army  entering  Hungary  and  gaining  possession  of 
Ksztergom,  Visegrad,  Eperjes,  Pecs,  Szegedin,  and  in  the  end 
Buda  itself,  which  was  at  last  recovered  after  so  long  an 
occupation.  The  Turks  were  pursued  as  far  as  Mohacs  and 
there  atoned  by  the  loss  of  twenty  thousand  men  for  their 
former  victory  on  this  plain.  Kara  Mustapha  attributed  his 
defeat  to  Tokoli,  and  had  his  former  ally  arrested  and  imprisoned 
in  Belgrade.  His  captivity  put  an  end  to  the  party  of  the 
king  of  the  Kurucz  ;  his  followers  dispersed,  and  the  towns 
which    they   had    held    surrendered.       Only   the   fortress   of 


336  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Munkacs  held  out,  defended  by  brave  Helen  Zrinyi,  the  wife 
of  Tokoli,  whose  heroism  is  often  sung  by  Transylvanian 
poets. 

The  insurrection  at  an  end,  and  Hungary  in  a  great  degree 
reconquered,  it  might  have  seemed  as  if  mercy  were  the  first 
duty  of  the  conqueror.  But  Leopold  and  his  lieutenants  were 
not  of  this  opinion.  An  amnesty  was  proclaimed  and 
immediately  afterwards  violated,  the  Italian  general,  Caraffa, 
becoming  the  merciless  executioner  of  imperial  vengeance. 
He  established  a  court  at  Eperjes,  and  the  horrors  of  this 
tribunal  recall  the  most  atrocious  deeds  of  the  Spaniards  in  the 
Low  Countries.  For  thirty  consecutive  days,  thirty  executioners 
exposed  their  victims,  innocent  as  well  as  guilty,  to  the  most 
refined  tortures  and  the  most  terrible  forms  of  death.  The 
Butchery  of  Eperjes,  as  it  is  called,  is  the  saddest  of  all  the  sad 
events  in  Hungarian  history.  The  emperor  Leopold  pretended 
that  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  these  horrors,  and  that  they  had 
taken  place  without  his  knowledge. 

After  having  terrorized  Hungary,  Leopold  thought  he  had 
the  right  to  expect  every  sort  of  concession.  Notwithstanding 
persecution,  up  to  this  date  the  monarchy  had  remained 
elective.  He  was  determined  it  should  now  become  heredi- 
tary; and  the  diet  of  1687,  in  conformity  with  the  wishes  of 
the  sovereign,  made  the  crown  hereditary  in  the  male  line  of 
the  house  of  Habsburg.  The  mode  of  procedure  had  been  the 
same  in  both  Hungary  and  Bohemia ;  first  executions,  and  then 
the  nominally  free  consent  of  the  country  to  changes  in  the 
law  of  the  land.  The  king  was  to  swear  to  maintain  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  the  land  ;  but  article  31  of  the  Golden  Bull,  or 
the  constitution  of  Andrew  IL,  was  abolished:  it  was  the  one 
which  proclaimed  the  right  of  insurrection.  When  granting 
these  concessions,  the  diet  stipulated  that  executions  should 
come  to  an  end,  and  prisoners  be  set  at  liberty,  and  a  general 
amnesty  was  in  consequence  proclaimed.  Tokoli  had  already 
taken  refuge  at  Nikomedia,  in  Asia;  the -fortress  of  Munkacs 
w^as  surrendered  by  Helen  Zrinyi. 


PEACE    WITH  TURKEY.  33/ 


Expulsion  of  the  Turks. 

It  now  seemed  as  if  Austria  wished  to  recompense  Hungary 
ior  her  more  or  less  voluntary  submission  by  fighting  her  battles 
against  the  Turks.  Louis  of  Baden  first  led  his  troops  against 
them  to  the  south  of  the  Danube,  and  then,  returning  within 
the  boundary  of  the  kingdom,  won  the  battle  of  Slan  Kamen 
on  the  delta  between  the  Danube  and  the  Save  (1691).  The 
Turks,  however,  with  the  help  of  Tokoli,  who  had  returned  to 
Transylvania,  were  able  to  hold  their  own  until  prince  Eugene 
of  Savo}^,  their  most  formidable  adversary,  appeared  upon  the 
scene.  Eugene  had  been  placed  in  command  of  an  army  for 
the  first  time,  and  was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Szegedin,  in 
Higher  Hungary  (1691),  when  he  heard  of  the  approach  of  the 
Turks  by  way  of  the  valley  of  the  Tisza.  He  immediately 
threw  a  bridge  across  this  river  at  Zenta,  and  had  made  prepara- 
tions to  attack  the  enemy,  when  he  received  orders  from  the 
emperor  by  courier,  forbidding  him  to  fight.  He  believed, 
however,  that  the  position  of  the  two  armies  was  such  as  to 
justify  disobedience,  and  his  audacity  was  crowned  with 
victory.  More  than  ten  thousand  Turks  were  slain,  great 
numbers  of  them  being  thrown  into  the  Tisza ;  the  sultan  fled 
to  Temesvar,  and  thence  to  Constantinople  (1697).  Winter 
prevented  prince  Eugene  from  following  up  his  advantages, 
and  the  emperor,  who  was  busy  about  the  succession  to  the 
throne  of  Spain,  granted  the  request  of  the  Turks  for  peace. 
A  treaty  was  signed  at  Karlovci  (Karlowitz),  by  which  the 
sultan  was  bound  not  to  grant  any  help  to  the  Hungarian 
malcontents,  and  to  abandon  all  claim  to  Transylvania.  Of 
all  her  old  possessions  in  Hungary,  Turkey  was  only  allowed 
to  keep  a  small  territory  between  the  Theiss  and  the  Maros. 
A  special  clause  in  this  treaty  of  Karlovci  stipulated  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  tomb  of  a  Mussulman  monk,  Gul  Baba, 
"  the  father  of  roses,"  at  Buda,  and  this  tomb  exists  in  our 
day,  and  is  still  the  object  of  pious  pilgrimages  to  the  Turks. 

z 


338  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Latter])'  the  Hungarians  have  kept  it  in  repair  at  their  own 
expense,  in  order  to  prove  their  sympathy  with  Turkey. 

In  its  struggles  against  Turkey  the  house  of  Austria  had 
found  most  valuable  allies  in  the  Servians,  who  had  emigrated 
in  large  numbers  from  Turkey  into  Hungary,  Their  chief, 
Brankovic,  had  lent  his  assistance  to  the  imperial  army;  but  he 
was  afterwards  suspected  of  treachery,  perhaps  on  account  of 
his  popularity  with  the  Servians  of  the  south,  and  was  arrested 
and  thrown  into  prison  at  Eger,  where  he  died  in  17  ii. 

In  the  month  of  April,  1690,  Leopold  laid  claim  to  Bosnia 
and  Bulgaria  on  behalf  of  Hungary,  and  called  upon  the  Slavs 
in  Turkey  to  take  up  arms.  Later  on,  he  invited  the  Servian 
patriarch  of  Pec  (Ypek)  to  settle  with  his  Servians  in  his 
dominions,  promising  them  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion 
and  a  separate  government.  In  i6gi,  the  patriarch  Arsenius 
Tsernoievitch  (Cernojevic)  accepted  this  offer,  and  from 
thirty-five  to  forty  thousand  families  were  settled  on  the  banks 
of  the  Maros,  in  Sirmia,  in  Slavonia,  in  the  district  of  Backa, 
and  even  in  the  outskirts  of  Buda ;  and  these  colonists,  owing 
to  their  special  privileges,  formed  a  distinct  nation.  The 
soldiers  which  they  furnished  to  Leopold  and  his  successors 
rendered  great  services  in  the  wars  against  the  Turks  and 
Hungarians. 

The  descendants  of  these  Servian  emigrants  are  still  to  be 
found  in  the  south  of  Hungary,  where  their  influence  is  con- 
siderable. The  Magyars  called  them  Rascians,  from  the  name 
of  the  old  town  of  Rasa,  which  used  formerly  to  stand  on  the 
spot  now  occupied  by  Novi  Bazar. 

Francis  Rakoczy  (1700-1711). 

After  the  departure  of  Tokoli,  Transylvania  had  become  an 
Austrian  province,  and  during  the  campaigns  against  the  Turks 
Austrian  generals  had  garrisoned  most  of  the  Transylvanian 
towns.  The  young  prince,  Michael  Apafy,  had  been  taken 
to  Vienna  to  be  educated,  and  the  principality  was  governed 
by   imperial   lieutenants.      The   treaty   of  Karlovci   in    1699 


ANNEXATION  OF  TRANSYLVANIA.  339 

obtained  the  recognition  of  this  new  state  of  things  from  the 
whole  of  Europe,  and  the  same  year,  by  a  special  charter, 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  principality  were  recognized  by 
Leopold,  and  the  free  exercise  of  the  Protestant  and  Orthodox 
religions,  which  were  practised  by  some  of  its  inhabitants,  was 
granted  to  them.  But  the  Transylvanian  nobles  were  not 
prepared  to  accept  at  once  an  annexation  which,  while  uniting 
the  province  once  more  to  the  mother-country,  also  subjected 
it  to  a  brutal  soldiery  and  a  harassing  administration. 

The  malcontents  soon  found  a  leader  in  the  person  of 
Francis  Rakoczy  (1706-17 11),  who  brought  with  him  to  their 
cause  a  heritage  of  heroic  traditions  and  hereditary  hatreds. 
His  mother  was  the  daughter  of  that  count  Zrinyi  who  had 
perished  on  the  scaffold,  and  the  widow  of  Francis  Rakoczy 
and  of  Tokoli.  His  father,  Francis  Rakoczy,  had  taken  part 
in  the  conspiracy  of  the  three  counts,  but,  more  fortunate  than 
they,  had  escaped  the  scaffold.  At  the  age  of  twelve,  Francis 
Rakoczy  had  been  taken  to  Vienna  to  be  educated  in  the 
Catholic  faith,  and  it  was  intended  he  should  become  a  priest. 
But  he  obtained  permission  to  return  to  Hungary  and  to  travel, 
and  when  still  very  young  he  married  a  princess  of  Hesse- 
Rheinsfeld,  whose  manly  courage  harmonized  well  with  his  own 
adventurous  disposition.  To  great  bodily  vigour  Rakoczy 
joined  rare  moral  energy  and  extraordinary  ambition.  His 
first  conspiracy  failed,  and  he  was  seized  and  thrown  into  the 
prison  of  Neustadt,  but  he  managed  to  escape  and  took  refuge 
in  Poland.  There,  while  the  emperor  confiscated  his  property 
and  put  a  price  upon  his  head,  he  entered  into  relations  with 
the  French  embassy,  and  obtained  some  help  in  money  from 
France.  He  returned  to  Hungary  in  1703,  when  a  revolt  of 
the  peasants  broke  out  in  the  districts  round  Munkacs.  A 
state  of  great  irritation  existed  at  the  time  throughout  the 
whole  kingdom.  The  efforts  of  the  court  of  Vienna  to  destroy 
Hungarian  liberty  had  continued  without  a  pause,  and  quite 
recently  the  emperor  Leopold  had  summoned  a  meeting  of 
the  great  nobles  and  prelates,  at  which  he  had  brought  forward 


340  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

a  scheme  for  suppressing  part  of  the  Hungarian  nobility,  that 
petite  noblesse  which  had  alwa3'S  taken  so  active  a  share  in 
the  pubUc  affairs  of  the  coinitats.  Besides  this,  a  large  number 
of  families  were  indignant  at  certain  clauses  of  the  treaty  of 
Karlovci,  which  forbade  the  return  to  Hungary  of  those  who 
had  emigrated  into  Turkey  during  the  late  revolts.  The 
insurrection  of  1703  was  not  only  a  rising  among  the  Kurucz  ; 
members  of  some  of  the  highest  families,  and  even  some 
Catholics,  took  the  side  of  the  revolted  peasants.  In  the 
beginning  of  1704,  the  insurrection,  spreading  from  Tran- 
sylvania, had  crossed  the  Vah,  and  even  made  some  progress 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Vienna.  At  this  moment  began  the 
war  of  the  Spanish  succession,  and  the  Bavarians,  who  were 
allies  of  the  French,  attacked  Austria.  Prince  Eugene  was 
busy  fighting  the  armies  of  Louis  XIV.  The  king  of  France 
entered  into  correspondence  with  Rakoczy,  calling  him  "  mon 
cousin,"  and  sent  him  French  officers  to  command  his  forces. 

In  spite  of  some  checks  to  his  arms,  Rakoczy  had  been 
able  to  organize  a  government.  A  diet  which  met  at  Szeczeny 
elected  him  chief  of  the  Hungarian  nation  ;  another,  assembled 
at  Maros-Vasarhely,  proclaimed  him  voievode  of  Transylvania. 
The  greater  part  of  the  kingdom  of  St.  Stephen  was,  in  fact, 
under  his  command,  though  he  would  gladly  have  come  to 
terms  with  the  emperor  on  condition  of  being  allowed  to  keep 
only  Transylvania.  But  the  exasperation  of  the  Hungarians 
was  such  that  they  had  determined  to  break  once  for  all  with 
the  Habsburgs.  At  the  diet  of  Onod,  on  the  river  Sajo,  in  the 
comitat  of  Borsod,  thirty-one  confederated  comitats — the  king- 
dom only  contained  fifty-two — proclaimed  Joseph  I.  no  longer 
king  of  Hungary.  They  dared  not  go  on  to  offer  the  crown  to 
Rakoczy,  but,  at  the  suggestion  of  Louis  XIV.,  offered  it  to  the 
elector  of  Bavaria.  The  elector  declined  to  accept  it,  and 
much  precious  time  was  lost  in  negociations,  during  which  the 
imperial  general,  Heister,  defeated  the  insurgents  at  Trencsin 
in  the  August  of  1708,  and  regained  from  them  part  of  Hun- 
gary.   Stahrenberg  and  Sickingen  followed  up  his  successes ; 


FRANCIS  RAKOCSY.  34 1 

Louis  XIV.,  exhausted  by  defeat,  could  no  longer  continue  his 
subsidies,  and  Rakoczy,  unable  to  go  on  with  the  war,  left  the 
country  and  took  refuge  in  Poland.  In  17 ii,  the  diet  agreed 
to  the  treaty  of  Szathmar,  which  granted  a  general  amnesty  and 
the  restoration  of  the  rights  of  Hungary. 

Some  time  after  Rakoczy  went  to  Paris,  and,  together  with 
some  of  his  companions  in  arms,  paid  a  visit  to  that  court  of 
France  with  which  he  had  formerly  treated  as  a  sovereign. 
This  visit  has  done  much  to  make  his  name  known  ;  he  and 
other  Magyar  nobles  are  frequently  mentioned  in  contemporary 
memoirs  and  documents  as  taking  part  in  court  ceremonies. 
Hungarian  vests  and  Transylvanian  boots  became  all  the 
fashion ;  "  there  is  no  good  society  without  prince  Rakoczy," 
writes  a  learned  lady  of  the  day,  and  St.  Simon  often  mentions 
the  celebrated  Transylvanian  in  his  memoirs.  The  Austrian 
government  at  last  became  anxious  about  his  stay  in  Paris,  and 
he  then  went  to  Turkey,  where  the  Porte,  in  fulfilment  of  the 
treaty  of  Pozarevac,  assigned  him  the  castle  of  Rodosto,  on  the 
Sea  of  Marmora,  as  a  place  of  residence.  He  did  not  abandon 
all  his  dreams  of  ambition  in  this  quiet  retreat.  More  than 
once  he  tried  to  interest  France  and  Turkey  in  his  cause, 
but  without  success.  To  occupy  his  leisure  time,  he  wrote  his 
"  Memoirs  of  the  Hungarian  Revolution,"  which  were  published 
at  the  Hague  in  1732.  His  name  is  also  associated  with  a 
celebrated  march.  It  is  not  known  who  was  its  author;  all 
that  is  certain  is  that  it  was  often  played  in  his  armies,  and 
that  it  has  become  a  national  hymn,  a  revolutionary  Marseil- 
laise, to  the  Magyars.  Whenever  Hungarian  liberty  has  been 
attacked,  the  Austrian  government  has  strictly  forbidden  the 
playing  of  this  march. 

Htingary  reconciled — The  Treaty  of  Fassarowitz  [I'ji^). 

Hungary  was  finally  reconciled  to  the  house  of  Austria  by 
the  peace  of  Szathmar,  and  to  Joseph  I.  belongs  the  honour  of 
accomplishing  this  work.     Declared  by  the  diet  in  1707   un- 


342  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

worthy  to  reign  over  Hungary,  he  had  nevertheless,  by  171 1, 
estabUshed  his  dynasty  firmly  on  the  throne.  He  was  a  prince 
of  gentle  and  tolerant  character,  and  would  doubtless  in  the 
end  have  secured  the  affection  of  his  newly  reconciled  subjects, 
but  he  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-three.  His  successor  Charles 
VI.,  who  was  Charles  HI.  of  Hungary,  reigned  from  17 11  to 
1740,  and  bound  the  Magyar  nation  still  more  closely  to  the 
dynasty,  endeavouring  by  all  means  to  carry  out  and  develop 
the  results  of  the  treaty  of  Szathmar.  After  his  coronation,  he 
recognized  in  a  special  law  the  right  of  the  Hungarians  to  elect 
their  own  king  in  case  the  direct  male  line  of  the  house  of 
Austria  should  fail.  But  though  he  made  this  concession  to 
Magyar  pride,  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  shows  how  little  he 
meant  to  be  bound  by  it.  The  first  years  of  his  reign  were 
occupied  in  restoring  order  in  the  land,  but  evil  traditions  were 
not  abandoned  ;  the  amnesty  was  limited  in  its  application, 
and  religious  intolerance  continued  to  flourish  with  less 
brutality  outwardly  perhaps,  but  with  all  its  old  obstinacy.  It 
attacked  alike  Hungarian  Protestants  and  the  new  Servian 
colonists  of  the  Orthodox  faith.  But  it  was  not  alone  the 
court  of  Vienna  which  was  guilty  of  this  persecuting  zeal  ; 
the  greater  part  of  the  Magyar  Catholics  joined  in  it,  and  it 
was  the  result  of  the  spirit  of  the  times. 

The  reign  of  Charles  III.  saw  the  final  expulsion  of  the 
Turks.  In  17 16,  the  grand  vizir  of  the  sultan,  Achmet  III., 
crossed  the  Save  and  marched  on  the  town  of  Petervarad. 
There  Prince  Eugene  awaited  him,  and  inflicted  a  defeat  which 
resounded  throughout  Christendom.  The  Hungarians  fought 
gloriously  in  this  battle,  which  cost  the  grand  vizir  his  life,  and 
restored  to  the  conquerors  the  town  of  Temesvar  and  the 
last  possessions  of  the  Turks  in  their  land. 

Prince  Eugene  immediately  followed  up  his  advantage  by 
advancing  right  up  to  the  walls  of  Belgrade,  and  forcing  the 
great  city  to  capitulate.  The  remembrance  of  this  exploit  was 
preserved  in  a  soldiers'  song  which  is  still  popular  in  the 
Austrian  army  : 


EXPULSION  OF  THE    TURKS.  343 

"  Prince  Eugene,  the  valiant  warrior, 
Vowed  to  gain  the  fair  white  city  ; 
Vowed  to  snatch  the  town  of  Belgrade 
From  its  captors  without  pity. 

"  Prince  Eugene,  the  knightly  soldier, 
Led  the  right  wing  straight  to  vict'ry  ; 
Like  a  lion,  fought  and  conquered,"  etc. 

The  palace  which  was  occupied  by  the  victorious  general  is 
still  shown  at  Belgrade. 

The  loss  of  this  fortress  was  a  fatal  blow  to  the  power  of 
the  Turks,  and  the  Porte  was  soon  after  forced  to  sign  the 
treaty  of  Passarowitz  (Pozaverac,  in  the  present  principality  of 
Servia).  By  it  were  lost  all  its  possessions  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  Danube,  the  town  of  Belgrade,  and  part  of  Servia  and 
Wallachia.  These  conquests  delivered  into  the  hands  of  Austria 
the  keys  of  the  Ottoman  empire.  She  might  then,  by  following 
up  her  successes  in  this  direction,  have  restored  the  Servian 
and  Roumanian  peoples  to  liberty  and  civilization,  and  have 
gradually  annexed  them  to  herself;  that  so  considerable  a 
number  of  Servians  and  Wallachians  were  already  incorporated 
in  the  kingdom  of  Hungary  would  have  served  as  an  attraction 
to  their  kinsmen.  But  for  the  accomplishment  of  so  great  a 
task,  the  king  of  Hungary  must  have  devoted  all  his  undi- 
vided energies  to  the  work,  and  the  Austrian  princes  preferred 
to  make  distant  acquisitions  of  territory  in  Germany  and 
Italy.  Besides,  Charles  VI.  cared  far  less  for  the  greatness  of 
Hungary  than  for  securing  the  throne  to  his  daughter,  Maria 
Theresa.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  Pragmatic  Sanction 
was  successively  recognized  by  the  diets  of  Croatia,  Transyl- 
vania, and  Hungary. 

The  Servian  Colonists — The  Military  Frontiers — The  Treaty  ,■/ 
Belgrade  (1739). 

Hungary,  now  that  she  was  reconciled  with  the  house  of 
Austria,  showed  little  political  vitality.  In  1723,  the  diet  re- 
duced the  Servian   colonists,  who  had  entered  the  kingdom 


344  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

under  Arsenius  Tsernoievitch,  to  the  condition  of  serfs  of  the 
soil ;  not  only  were  they  not  to  be  allowed  to  return  to  their 
native  land,  as  Leopold  had  promised  they  should,  but  they  were 
no  longer  to  be  able  to  move  from  one  part  of  the  country  to 
another.  Here  we  see  the  first  signs  of  that  spirit  of  exclusive- 
ness,  that  intolerance  towards  other  nations,  which  has  more 
than  once  characterized  Magyar  policy ;  but  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  III.  this  intolerance  was  directed  rather  towards  re- 
ligions than  nationalities.  Magyar  Protestants  and  Orthodox 
Servians  were  persecuted  by  their  fanatical  fellow-countrymen, 
until  at  last  the  emperor,  who  was  by  no  means  inclined  to 
toleration,  was  obliged  to  interfere  in  their  favour. 

"  Thus,"  says  M.  Sayous,  "  we  see  the  gradual  formation  of 
the  modern  policy  of  the  Habsburgs.  It  was  sincere  on  this 
occasion,  and  at  various  other  times  was  more  sincere  than  the 
Magyar  historians  are  willing  to  recognize,  but  only  too  often 
it  is  open  to  the  charge  of  treachery  and  dissimulation.  It 
consisted  in  being  more  liberal  than  the  constitutionalists,  more 
ready  for  progress  than  the  assemblies,  more  tolerant  of  re- 
ligious minorities  and  small  nationalities  than  the  fellow- 
countrymen  of  Verboczy.  It  more  than  once  proposed  reforms 
which  it  knew  very  well  ought  not  to  be  accepted,  and  con- 
trived to  wound  the  feelings  of  the  Magyars  so  much  by  the 
manner  in  which  these  proposals  were  drawn  up  by  foreigners, 
that  it  forced  them  into  such  a  refusal  of  them  as  damaged 
them  in  the  eyes  of  Europe.  When,  on  the  contrary,  the 
country  and  the  diets  were  anxious  for  reform,  then  the  court 
at  Vienna  took  fright,  or  pretended  to  take  fright,  at  the  inno- 
vations. At  the  same  time,  these  changes  were  seldom  openly 
refused ;  they  were  put  off  to  a  more  convenient  season,  and 
such  a  season  never  cam.e." 

Charles,  however,  rewarded  the  Hungarians  for  their  com- 
pliance in  voting  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  by  some  rather  im- 
portant concessions.  He  undertook  to  convoke  the  diet  at 
least  once  in  three  years  ;  to  reside  in  Hungary  whenever  cir- 
cumstances permitted  him  to  do  so  ;  to  arrange  the  business 


THE  MILITARY  FRONTIERS.  345 

of  the  country  in  person  with  the  help  of  the  Council  of 
Regency,  presided  over  by  the  palatine ;  and  he  made  Rieka 
(Fiume)  a  free  port. 

The  organization  of  the  military  frontier  was  one  of  the 
most  important  acts  of  his  reign.  It  reached  from  the  banks 
of  the  Save  to  those  of  the  Tisza  and  the  Maros.  This  insti- 
tution was  not  the  work  of  a  single  man  nor  of  a  single  day. 
Under  the  constant  threat  of  an  Ottoman  invasion,  several  of 
Charles  VI.'s  predecessors  had  felt  the  need  of  creating  within 
the  kingdom  a  special  body  of  troops  for  the  defence  of 
the  frontiers,  and  the  immigrations  of  those  Servians  who  fled 
from  Turkish  oppression  furnished  the  materials  for  such 
a  body.  In  1522,  after  the  fall  of  Shabats  and  Belgrade, 
Louis  II.,  with  the  consent  of  the  diet,  had  entrusted  the 
Croatian  frontier  to  those  German  soldiers  who  had  settled 
there.  Their  centre  was  at  Varazdin.  The  Uskoci,  or  Slav 
refugees,  who  came  at  about  the  same  time  from  Turkey,  also 
received  lands,  with  the  special  duty  of  defending  them.  In 
1575,  the  Slav  and  Croat  frontiers  were  placed  under  the  con- 
trol of  a  general,  and  owing  to  the  troubles  of  the  time,  the 
commandants  of  these  regions  were  made  independent  of  the 
civil  power  of  the  diet  of  Croatia.  Their  troops  were  entirely 
composed  of  German  and  Slav  soldiers,  who  enjoyed  special 
privileges,  and  were  exempt  from  all  taxes.  They  steadily 
increased  in  number,  owing  to  successive  colonizations.  At 
the  time  of  the  peace  of  Karlowitz,  the  frontier  was  already 
divided  into  three  districts,  each  under  a  general  :  those  of 
Karlovac,  Varazdin,  and  the  Banat.  The  Hungarian  diet 
hardly  ever  interfered  in  the  affairs  of  these  purely  military 
districts,  in  which  the  Magyars  were  only  indirectly  interested. 
After  the  treaty  of  Karlowitz,  this  frontier  system  was  extended 
to  the  recently  conquered  country  along  the  shores  of  the  Save 
in  Slavonia,  the  Tisza,  and  the  Maros ;  and  the  new  frontiers 
were  made  directly  dependent  on  the  Council  and  Chamber  of 
the  emperor.  When  the  Banat  was  reconquered  in  1724, 
Servian  and  Roumanian  refugees  were  settled  there  in  the  same 


346  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

way.  The  command  of  these  frontiers  was  generally  given  to 
German  officers  directly  dependent  on  Vienna.  It  is  evident 
that  when  the  Magyars  were  reducing  all  the  Servians  within 
the  kingdom  to  a  state  of  serfdom,  those  on  the  frontier  would 
prefer  the  rule  of  tlie  emperor,  which  offered  satisfaction  both 
to  their  warlike  instincts  and  to  their  hatred  of  the  Turks.  On 
their  side,  the  Magyars  could  not  but  see  with  distrust  this 
new  institution  ;  these  lands,  which  were  included  within  the 
frontier  line,  were  in  reality  detached  from  the  main  body  of 
the  kingdom,  and  soldiers  drawn  from  thence,  never  having 
been' under  Hungarian  influence,  might  become  obedient  in- 
struments in  the  hands  of  the  Habsburgs,  and,  after  having 
served  against  the  Turks,  when  once  the  ancient  enemy  of 
Christianity  was  no  longer  to  be  dreaded,  be  the  sure  support 
of  Viennese  despotism.  Hence  the  constant  complaints  of 
the  Hungarians  and  the  Croats.  But,  notwithstanding,  the 
institution  of  the  military  frontiers  continued  to  our  time. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  events  of  the  reign  of 
Charles  VI.  was  the  revolt  of  Servian  and  Hungarian  peasants 
(1734),  under  the  leadership  of  Pero  Tzegedinac,  one  of  the 
old  soldiers  of  Rakoczy.  They  were  now  serfs  of  the  soil,  and 
the  Servians  saw  their  condition  grow  worse  from  day  to  day  ; 
the  victims  of  both  religious  persecution  and  personal  oppres- 
sion, they  rose  against  their  tyrants,  and  were  joined  by  some 
Hungarian  Protestants  and  some  partisans  of  Rakoczy's.  They 
were  defeated  by  the  army  and  cruelly  punished,  and  their 
chiefs  put  to  death.  The  Servians  bitterly  resented  their  treat- 
ment at  this  time,  and  some  years  later  a  certain  number  of 
them  left  Hungary  to  settle  in  Russia. 

The  campaigns  of  1737— 1739  against  the  Turks  made  the 
reign  of  Charles  VI.  end  less  brilliantly  than  might  have  been 
expected  from  its  commencement.  His  alliance  with  Russia 
obliged  him  to  undertake  the  war,  and  it  began  with  some  great 
successes.  The  command  of  the  imperial  army  was  given  to 
prince  Francis  of  Lorraine,  who  had  recently  married  Maria 
Theresa,  but  it  was  led  by  imprudent  and  disunited  chiefs. 


PEACE   OF  BELGRADE.  347 

among  whom,  however,  we  do  not  find  a  single  Hungarian  ; 
and  when  it  attempted  the  invasion  of  Bosnia  and  Wallachia, 
it  was  beatenor  surprised  at  Banjaluka,  Nich,  and  Viddin, 
and  forced  to  retire  into  Transylvania.  The  Turks  captured 
Orsova  on  the  27th  of  May,  1738.  Belgrade  was  now  the 
only  place  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Save  which  remained  to 
the  emperor,  and  it  was  not  in  a  condition  to  maintain  a  siege. 
He  was  forced  to  treat  with  the  enemy.  By  the  treaty  of 
Belgrade  the  Porte  once  more  obtained  possession  of  the  whole 
of  Servia.  The  imperialists  were  allowed  to  retain  the  banat 
of  the  Temes,  but  they  were  required  to  dismantle  the  fort- 
resses of  Mehadia,  Uj  Palanka,  Kubin,  and  Pantchevo.  At 
one  time  the  Porte  thought  of  proclaiming  the  young  Joseph 
Rakoczy,  the  son  of  the  last  hero  of  Transylvania,  prince  of 
the  province,  but  he  died  in  1738.  His  brother  Francis  went 
to  live  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples  under  the  name  of  marquis 
of  St.  Elizabeth,  and  died,  leaving  no  children  ;  and  with  him 
ended  the  family  Avhich  had  played  so  distinguished  a  part  in 
the  history  of  Hungary. 


CHAPTER  XXL 

MARIA   THERESA    (1740-1780), 

IVar  of  the  Austrian  Succession — Loss  of  Silesia — Treaty  of 
Aix-la-  Chapelle  (1748). 

The  arch-duchess  Maria  Theresa,  heiress  of  Charles  VI.,  had 
married  Francis  Stephen,  duke  of  Lorraine.  Ever  since  the 
preceding  century,  the  house  of  Lorraine  had  been  allied  to 
the  house  of  Austria.  Duke  Charles  V.  had  married  the 
sister  of  Leopold  L,  had  commanded  his  army,  and  had  been 
one  of  the  heroes  of  the  war  against  the  Turks.  His  grandson, 
Francis  Stephen,  had  been  brought  up'at  the  court  of  Vienna, 
and  from  an  early  age  chosen  to  be  the  husband  of  the 
hereditary  princess,  while  his  younger  brother  married  Maria 
Anna,  the  younger  sister  of  Maria  Theresa.  Francis  had  been 
obliged  by  the  treaty  of  Vienna  to  give  up  Lorraine  to  Stanislas 
Leszczynski,  and  had  obtained  in  exchange  the  grand  duchy 
of  Tuscany,  left  vacant  by  the  death  of  the  last  of  the  Medici. 
I'uscany  was  not  attached  to  the  dominions  of  the  reigning 
house  of  Austria;  it  became  an  inheritance  for  second  sons, 
and,  at  the  death  of  Francis  Stephen,  passed  to  his  younger  son 
Leopold,  and  not  to  his  elder  son  Joseph  H. 

Maria  Theresa  was  the  first  woman  who  had  ruled  over  the 
whole  group  of  states  forming  the  Austrian  power,  and  she  had 
not  the  prestige  of  that  imperial  crown  which  had  been  worn 
so  long  by  her  predecessors  that  it  seemed  hereditary  in  the 
house  of  Austria,  though,   as  queen   of  Bohemia,  she  had  a 


JVAI?    WITH  PRUSSIA.  349 

vote  in  the  Electoral  College.  She  made  her  husband  co-regent, 
but  left  him  no  large  share  of  power  ;  the  active  and  imperious 
temper  of  the  young  princess  did  not  admit  of  a  fair  division 
of  her  prerogative,  and  at  the  beginning  of  her  reign  Francis 
Stephen  was  no  more  than  the  husband  of  the  queen.  Her 
accession  seemed  a  favourable  opportunity  for  the  attacks  of  the 
neighbours  and  enemies  of  Austria.  No  one  believed  in  the 
permanence  of  the  Austrian  state  as  it  had  been  created  by 
Charles  VI.  with  the  help  of  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  ;  nothing 
seemed  easier  than  to  dismember  it.  The  French  Marshal  de 
Belle-Isle  even  arranged  a  plan  which  gave  the  Low  Countries 
to  France,  Bohemia  and  the  imperial  crown  to  Bavaria,  Silesia 
to  Prussia,  and  Tuscany,  Parma,  and  the  Lombard  possessions 
to  Spain  and  Sardinia.  There  was  only  one  thing  which 
puzzled  the  marshal,  and  that  was  "  what  to  do  with  Moravia." 
Maria  Theresa  was  to  think  herself  lucky  to  keep  Hungary  and 
the  Austrian  provinces.  It  seemed  as  if  no  state  could  be 
easier  to  break  up  than  this  polyglot  collection  of  principalities, 
which  had  no  other  tie  than  the  person  of  the  sovereign  and 
the  more  or  less  faithful  adhesion  of  the  diets  to  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction.  A  new  power  had  arisen  in  the  north  of  Germany, 
which  made  conquest  the  law  of  its  existence  and  war  its 
national  trade.  Prussia  had  been  erected  into  a  monarchy 
early  in  the  century,  and  now  had  for  its  sovereign  Frederick 
II.,  a  prince  whose  ambitions  were  as  vast  as  his  scruples  were 
small,  and  who  would  have  deserved  the  surname  of  Great,  if 
his  political  honesty  had  been  equal  to  his  genius.  He  invaded 
Silesia.  He  claimed  as  a  justification  for  his  invasion  rights 
no  better  founded  than  those  in  virtue  of  which  Austria  after- 
wards dismembered  Poland.  It  was  in  vain  that  Austria 
protested  ;  Frederick  had  the  final  argument  of  kings  on  his 
side,  and  the  capture  of  Breslau  and  victory  of  Molvitz  decided 
the  cause  in  his  favour  in  1741.  He  had  at  his  command  an 
army  in  admirable  condition,  and  treasure  which  had  been 
carefully  accumulated  by  his  predecessor ;  while  the  Austrian 
treasury  was  empty,  and  the  army  in  a  wretched  state. 


3 so  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  success  of  the  king  of  Prussia  seemed  a  proof  of  the 
weakness  of  the  edifice  which  had  been  so  laboriously  raised 
by  Charles  VI.  The  young  queen  found  herself  surrounded 
by  enemies  on  every  side ;  among  them  were  Bavaria,  France, 
Spain,  the  elector  palatine,  and  the  elector  of  Cologne. 
C'harles  Albert,  duke  of  Bavaria,  had  married  the  cousin  of 
Maria  Theresa,  and  he  now  put  in  a  claim  for  part  of  the 
Austrian  inheritance  as  the  descendant  of  Anna,  daughter  of 
Ferdinand  I.,  who  had  married  duke  Albert  V.  The  will  of 
Ferdinand  I.  ran  thus  :  "  In  case  our  sons  shall  die  without 
heirs  male,  our  daughters  shall  have  a  right  to  part  of  the 
inheritance."  According  to  Charles  Albert,  directly  females 
were  allowed  to  succeed,  the  elder  daughter  of  Ferdinand  I., 
and  her  heirs,  ought  to  take  precedence  of  all  later  heirs.  He 
also  laid  claim  to  Austria  by  right  of  the  claims  of  the  house 
of  Bavaria,  dating  from  before  the  year  1156.  Augustus  III., 
elector  of  Saxony,  who  had  married  the  elder  daughter  of  the 
emperor  Joseph  II.,  founded  his  claim  partly  on  that  of  his 
wife  and  partly  on  a  distant  relationship  to  the  house  of 
Eabenberg.  The  other  powers  brought  forward  no  other  right 
than  that  of  the  strongest,  wishing  simply  to  increase  their  own 
territory  at  the  expense  of  Austria. 

At  first  Maria  Theresa  tried  to  negociate.  She  offered  to 
give  up  the  duchy  of  Luxemburg  to  Louis  XV.,  if  he  would 
persuade  Spain  to  content  herself  with  the  Low  Countries  and 
the  elector  of  Bavaria  to  be  satisfied  with  some  portion  of 
Upper  Austria  ;  but  these  negociations  came  to  nothing,  and 
she  was  obliged  to  appeal  to  the  fortune  of  war.  An  alliance 
was  concluded  between  Spain,  France,  and  Bavaria.  It  has 
been  lately  proved  that  this  treaty  of  Nymphenburg,  at  any 
rate  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  come  down  to  us,  is  apocryphal, 
but  one  fact  is  indisputable,  and  that  is  that  France  placed  its 
troops  at  the  disposal  of  the  elector  of  Bavaria.  Charles  Albert, 
with  the  help  of  the  French  army,  captured  Linz  and  pushed 
on  into  Bohemia.  The  French  for  the  first  time  set  foot  on 
the    soil   of   the   kingdom    of    St.    Vacslav,    while    Frederick 


WA/?   OF   THE  AUSTRIAN  succession:  35  I 

occupied  Silesia  and  the  Spaniards  attacked  Italy.  In  this 
emergency  Maria  Theresa  was  saved  by  the  swords  of  her 
Hungarian  subjects  and  the  subsidies  of  England.  We  shall 
see  later  on  what  we  must  think  of  the  famous  '^  Moriamur 
pro  rege  nostra."  After  an  interregnum  of  two  years,  the  elector 
of  Bavaria  was  chosen  emperor  on  the  24th  of  January,  1742, 
and  it  seemed  as  if  the  imperial  crown  had  escaped  from  the 
house  of  Habsburg- Lorraine.  Meantime,  however,  England 
had  paralysed  the  efforts  of  Spain  in  Italy,  and  forced  Frederick 
II.,  after  the  victory  of  Chotusic  (near  Caslav),  to  sign  the 
preliminaries  of  Breslau  and  the  peace  of  Berlin.  By  this 
treaty  Maria  Theresa  gave  up  to  her  fortunate  rival  Upper  and 
Lower  Silesia,  the  Bohemian  county  of  Glatz  (Kladsko),  and 
the  lordship  of[Kostcher  in  Moravia — in  all  more  than  six 
hundred  and  fifty  square  miles  ;  and  the  only  possessions  which 
she  retained  in  Silesia  were  the  principality  of  Tesin  (Teschen) 
and  some  portions  of  those  of  Opava  (Troppau),  Jagerndorf, 
and  Neisse  (1742).  This  was  a  serious  loss  ;  Silesia  conquered 
by  Frederick  brought  Prussia  to  the  frontiers  of  Bohemia. 
Breslau  had  to  give  up  its  old  name  of  Vratislav  and  become 
a  completely  German  town.  The  province,  however,  was 
almost  entirely  Protestant,  and  regretted  Austrian  rule  but  little. 
Saxony,  which  had  hoped  to  annex  Silesia  and  part  of 
Moravia,  now  left  the  league  and  concluded  a  separate  treaty 
with  Maria  Theresa  in  December,  1743.  For  one  moment  the 
fortune  of  war  seemed  to  turn  to  the  side  of  Austria.  The 
pandours,  or  Slav  soldiers  of  the  frontier,  did  wonders  under 
the  command  of  De  Menzel  and  Trenck.  The  French 
were  forced  to  evacuate  Bohemia,  and  the  emperor,  Charles 
VII.,  saw  the  Austrian  troops  enter  and  occupy  his  electorate 
of  Bavaria.  He  had  had  himself  crowned  at  Prague,  and  in 
her  turn  the  queen  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary  now  received 
the  homage  of  Bavaria,  and  established  a  royal  lieutenancy 
at  Munich.  France  and  Bavaria  proposed  peace,  but  it  was 
refused,  and  France  attacked  Austria  in  the  Low  Countries, 
while  Frederick  II.  again  took  up  arms  in  July,  1744,  entered 


352  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Bohemia,  captured  Prague,  and  defeated  the  Austrians  and 
Saxons  at  Hohenfriedburg  on  the  4th  of  June,  1745  ;  at  Zarov 
(Sorr)  near  Trutnov,  and  at  Kesseldorf  in  December,  1745. 
Austria  still  had  on  her  side  Saxony,  England,  and  Holland  ; 
nevertheless  her  arms  were  not  very  successful.  Charles  VII. 
returned  to  Bavaria,  though  only  to  die.  His  son  signed  the 
treaty  of  Fiissen  and  recognized  the  Pragmatic  Sanction.  The 
imperial  crown  returned  to  the  house  of  Austria  with  the 
election  of  Maria  Theresa's  husband,  Francis  of  Lorraine,  as 
emperor,  and  the  mediation  of  England  brought  about  the 
peace  of  Dresden  between  Prussia,  Austria,  and  Saxony,  in 
which  Prussia  recognized  the  imperial  dignity  of  Francis  I. 
and  the  states  of  Prussia  and  Austria  mutually  guaranteed  one 
another's  possessions. 

We  shall  not  follow  the  various  events  of  this  war  in  the  Low 
Countries  or  Italy.  Notwithstanding  the  support  of  England 
and  also  of  Russia,  which  sent  troops  as  far  as  the  Rhine,  the 
armies  of  Maria  Theresa  were  generally  defeated.  The  treaty 
of  Aix-la-Chapelle  put  an  end  to  the  series  of  campaigns,  the 
result  of  which  was  more  to  the  advantage  of  the  empress- 
queen  than  she  could  possibly  have  hoped.  She  gave  up 
Upper  Novara  and  Vigevano  to  Sardinia,  and  Parma,  Piacenza, 
and  Guastalla  to  Don  Philip  of  Spain.  But,  with  the  exception 
of  the  loss  of  Silesia,  the  whole  of  the  Austrian  dominions 
remained  intact,  and  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  became  part  of 
the  international  law  of  Europe  (1748). 

Kminitz — The  French  Alliance — The  Seven  Years'  War 
(1756-1763). 

The  war  of  the  Austrian  succession  had  greatly  modified  the 
political  system  of  Europe.  Prussia  had  come  to  the  front  as 
the  grasping  and  merciless  enemy  of  the  house  of  Habsburg- 
Lorraine,  and  the  acquisition  of  Silesia  had  given  Frederick  II. 
a  strong  position  on  the  frontier  of  Bohemia  itself.  Russia 
had  begun  to  take  a  share  in  the  affairs  of  Europe,  and  her 
alliance  was  in  future  to  have  great  weight   in  the  disputes 


AUSTRIAN  ALLIANCE    WITH  FRANCE.  353 

which  occurred  between  Vienna  and  Berlin.  From  the  year 
1746,  a  treaty  of  defensive  alliance  had  existed  between 
Austria  and  Russia,  by  which  each  power  undertook  to  furnish 
an  army  of  sixty  thousand  men  in  case  Frederick  should  attack 
Poland,  Austria,  or  Russia. 

Austria,  however,  coild  not  be  sure  of  keeping  her  Spanish 
or  Italian  territories  as  long  as  France  was  her  enemy.  It  wa> 
in  the  year  1753  that  Maria  Theresa  summoned  to  her  counsels 
a  celebrated  man,  the  count  de  Kounic,  generally  known  by 
the  name  of  Kaunitz,  who  succeeded  in  putting  an  end  to  the 
long-standing  rivalry  of  the  houses  of  Bourbon  and  Habsburg, 
and  brought  about  a  friendly  understanding  between  the  courts 
of  Vienna  and  Versailles.  Kaunitz  was  a  member  of  an  old 
Bohemian  family.  He  was  born  at  Vienna  in  17  11,  and  had 
at  first  been  destined  for  the  Church,  but  the  death  of  his  elder 
brother  had  thrown  him  back  into  the  world.  He  had  studied 
at  the  universities  of  Vienna,  Leipzig,  and  Leyden,  and  had 
travelled  in  Holland,  England,  France,  and  Italy.  He  had 
married  a  Stahrenberg,  a  descendant  of  the  leader  who  had 
defended  Vienna,  and  had  entered  the  public  service  when  still 
very  young  (1737).  Under  Charles  VI.  he  had  been  a  member 
of  the  imperial  council ;  and  on  her  accession  Maria  Theresa 
had  entrusted  to  him  several  diplomatic  missions,  sending  him 
first  to  Italy,  then  to  Brussels,  at  last  to  England,  where  he 
showed  himself  possessed  of  rare  diplomatic  powers.  He 
afterwards  represented  Austria  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  from 
1751  to  1753  was  Austrian  ambassador  in  Paris.  As  soon  as 
he  returned  to  Vienna  he  pointed  out  very  forcibly  the  necessity 
of  the  French  alliance  to  his  sovereign.  France,  who  could 
direct  her  troops  at  once  upon  Belgium,  the  Rhine,  and  Italy, 
was,  he  argued,  far  the  most  important  ally  for  Austria.  In 
spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  emperor  and  the  majority  of  the 
council,  it  was  finally  decided  that  steps  should  be  taken 
towards  an  alliance  with  France ;  Kaunitz  was  appointed 
chancellor  and  placed  at  the  head  of  foreign  affairs,  and  from 
this  time  all  his  efforts  aimed  at  a  reconciliation  between  the 

2   A 


354  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

two  cabinets.  His  first  effort  was  to  isolate  Prussia.  England, 
Russia,  and  Saxony  were  already  the  allies  of  Austria,  and  the 
German  Catholics  leaned  to  her  side.  Under  these  circum- 
stances it  even  seemed  possible  to  reconquer  Silesia.  But 
unfortunately  France  and  England  were  at  the  time  in  the 
midst  of  a  colonial  dispute,  and  war  between  them  had  become 
inevitable.  Kaunitz  at  first  tried  to  remain  neutral ;  but  it 
soon  became  evident  that  an  alliance  with  France  would  be  far 
more  useful  against  Frederick  II.  than  one  with  Great  Britain, 
especially  as  England  had  made  overtures  to  Frederick  in  con- 
sequence of  a  threatened  attack  on  Hanover  on  the  part  of 
France.  The  treaty  of  Versailles  was  consequently  signed 
between  France  and  Austria  on  the  nth  of  May,  1756. 

It  has  been  said  that,  in  her  desire  to  obtain  the  friendship 
of  Louis  XV.,  Maria  Theresa  entered  into  direct  relation  vi^ith 
Madame  de  Pompadour,  and  wrote  a  letter  to  her  in  which 
she  styled  her,  "dear  friend  and  fair  cousin."  The  proud 
princess  never  used  such  language.  "  You  are  mistaken,"  she 
writes  on  the  loth  of  October,  1763,  to  the  electress  of  Saxony, 
"  if  you  believe  we  have  ever  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
Pompadour.  Not  a  single  letter  has  been  sent,  not  a  single 
interview  with  our  minister  has  taken  place  by  means  of  her  • 
they  have  paid  court  to  her  like  the  rest,  but  there  has  been  no 
intimacy.     Such  a  go-between  would  not  have  suited  me." 

The  clauses  of  the  treaty  of  Versailles  which  were  published 
only  stipulated  for  a  defensive  alliance,  but  its  secret  articles 
agreed  that  Austria  should  reconquer  Silesia  and  the  lost 
Italian  possessions,  and  territorial  gain  was  also  promised  to 
France.  "  I  have  never  signed  a  treaty  so  willingly,"  said  the 
empress.  By  a  later  convention  France  placed  one  hundred  and 
five  thousand  men  and  twelve  millions  of  florins  at  the  service 
of  Austria  (May,  1757).  In  this  same  year  Frederick  II.  had 
recourse  to  the  tactics  which  had  served  him  so  well  sixteen 
years  before ;  he  suddenly  invaded  Saxony,  and,  after  the 
indecisive  battle  of  Lobosice,  entered  Bohemia  and  advanced 
as  far  as  Prague.     His  defeat  at  Kolin  (1757)  obliged  him,  how- 


THE  SEVEN  YEARS'    WAR.  355 

ever,  to  evacuate  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia.  At  last  he  had 
found  a  worthy  adversary  in  Marshal  Daun;  but,  though  pressed 
by  the  French  on  the  west,  by  the  Russians  who  had  captured 
Eastern  Prussia  on  the  east,  and  on  the  south  by  the  Austrians, 
who  had  once  more  forced  their  way  into  Silesia,  Frederick 
held  his  enemies  at  bay. 

The  war  between  the  Prussian  and  Austrian  generals  was  a 
series  of  alternate  triumphs  and  defeats.  In  1757,  the  Hun- 
garian hussars  pushed  on  as  far  as  Berlin.  We  shall  not  enter 
into  well-known  details,  but  will  only  recall  the  victory  of 
Frederick  at  Lissa  (Leuthen)  on  the  5th  of  December,  1757, 
where  he  beat  the  duke  of  Lorraine,  Daun,  and  Nadasdy ;  his 
defeats  at  Hochkirch  (1758),  Kunersdorf  in  August,  and  Alaxen 
in  November  (1759),  and  at  Landshut ;  and  his  victories  at 
Liegnitz  on  the  15th  of  August,  and  at  Torgau  on  the  3rd  of 
November,  1760.  •  But  all  these  efforts  led  to  no  result,  and 
after  1760  the  war  was  carried  on  but  feebly.  Silesia,  the 
main  cause  of  the  war,  remained  in  the  hands  of  Prussia ;  and 
the  peace  of  Hubertsburg,  concluded  in  1763  between  Prussia 
Saxony,  and  Austria,  put  an  end  to  the  Seven  Years'  War,  and 
left  everything  in  the  status  quo  ante  belhnn.  By  a  secret  clause 
in  it,  Frederick  II.  promised  his  vote  in  the  next  imperial 
election  to  the  archduke  Joseph. 

The  Seven  Years'  War  was  an  excellent  school  for  the 
Austrian  army,  which  improved  greatly  during  its  continuance. 
Among  the  generals  whose  courage  and  talents  were  brouo-ht 
to  light  by  it,  Joseph  Daun  must  be  especially  noticed.  He 
established  the  School  for  Cadets  at  Vienna,  and  recalled  in  his 
mode  of  warfare  the  severe  style  of  Montecuculli.  Also  the 
Livonian  Loudon,  who  first  tried  to  enter  the  service  of  the 
king  of  Prussia,  and,  when  refused,  consecrated  to  the  service 
of  Austria  a  glorious  career  which  she  still  remembers ;  and 
the  two  Irishmen  Brown  and  Lascy.  The  victories  ot  Kolin 
Hochkirch,  Kunersdorf,  and  Maxen  proved  that  Austria  could 
now  take  rank  among  the  military  powers  of  Europe,  and  from 
this  time  the  nations  became  anxious  for  her  alliance. 


356  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

The  emperor  Francis  I.  died  shortly  after  the  treaty  of 
Hubertsburg.  He  had  no  less  than  sixteen  children  by  his 
marriage  with  Maria  Theresa,  and  through  them  the  house  of 
Austria  became  allied  to  most  of  the  reigning  families  of 
Europe.  The  princess  Maria  Christina  married  Albert 
of  Saxony  ;  Maria  Amelia,  duke  Ferdinand  of  Parma  ;  Maria 
Carolme,  Fenlinand,  king  of  the  Two  Sicilies;  and  the  arch- 
duke Ferdinand  married  the  hereditary  princess  of  Modena. 
These  marriages  naturally  increased  the  interest  which  the 
house  of  Austria  had  always  taken  in  Italian  affairs.  Finally, 
the  marriage  of  Maria  Antonia  (Marie  Antoinette)  with  the 
dauphin  of  France  in  1770  seemed  as  if  it  would  perpetuate 
that  happy  alliance  between  the  families  of  Bourbon  and 
Habsburg-Lorraine  which  Kaunitz  had  succeeded  in  bringing 
about.  Maria  Theresa's  correspondence  with  the  dauphiness 
and  with  M.  de  Mercy,  her  ambassador  at  the  court  of  France, 
has  been  preserved,  and  shows  the  deep  interest  the  empress 
took  in  the  preservation  of  cordial  relations  between  the  two 
countries.  It  also  reflects  great  honour  on  the  character  of 
Maria  Theresa  both  as  a  sovereign  and  a  mother. 

After  the  death  of  Francis  I.,  his  son,  Joseph  IL,  was  elected 
emperor  (1765).  His  mother  associated  him  with  herself  in 
the  government  of  the  Austrian  dominions,  but  his  part  in  it 
was  not  much  more  active  than  had  been  that  of  his  father, 
although  he  had  control  of  the  army. 

Fart  it  ion  of  Poland — Acquisition  of  Galicia  (1772). 

Notwithstanding  the  loss  inflicted  on  her  by  Frederick  II., 
the  empress-queen  had  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  the 
prosperity  of  her  dominions  and  the  splendour  of  her  house. 
An  occasion  soon  presented  itself  for  repairing  the  injury  she 
had  suffered  in  the  loss  of  Silesia  by  the  acquisition  of  new 
territory,  and  the  court  at  Vienna  did  not  allow  it  to  escape. 
The  Austrian  dominions  and  the  republic  of  Poland  adjoined 
one  another  in  those  parts  of  Silesia  which  the  empress  still 
retained,  and  also  in  the  kingdom   of  Hungary.     For  some 


CONDITION  OF  POLAND.  357 

years  tl}e  republic  had  fallen  into  a  state  of  miserable  decay 
which  made  it  an  easy  prey  to  its  neighbours,  while  the  de- 
plorable system  by  which  its  sovereigns  were  elected  by  a 
riotous  and  anarchical  nobility  had  rendered  its  ultimate 
conquest  by  foreigners  inevitable.  The  Polish  aristocracy  had 
taken  possession  of  the  country,  and  had  become  the  land- 
owning class,  but  had  made  no  effort  to  create  a  united  nation  ; 
a  middle  class  had  never  existed.  Reasons  for  the  interference 
of  ambitious  neighbours  were  not  wanting.  It  is  quite  certain 
Maria  Theresa  would  not  herself  have  proposed  the  partition 
of  Poland  ;  but  when  once  Prussia  and  Russia  laid  claim  to 
the  whole  or  part  of  the  kingdom,  the  empress  was  not  slow 
in  suiting  her  policy  to  her  interest. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  idea  first  occurred  to  Frederick 
II.  He  had  already  tried  to  come  to  an  understanding  with 
the  courts  of  St.  Petersburg  and  Copenhagen  about  the  partition 
of  Sweden;  and  in  1772,  after  the  defeat  of  the  Turks  by  the 
Russians,  a  defeat  which  made  it  necessary  for  Austria  to 
interfere,  he  proposed  that  territory  in  Poland  should  be 
offered  to  Russia  in  lieu  of  land  that  the  czar  might  have 
seized  in  Turkey,  and  that  Prussia  and  Austria  should  receive 
some  fragments  of  the  lands  of  the  republic  to  enable  the 
balance  of  power  to  be  maintained.  Catherine  II.  was  quite 
ready  to  agree  to  such  a  proposition,  and  Joseph  II.,  after 
two  interviews  with  the  king  of  Prussia  at  Neisse  and  at 
Neustadt,  was  also  persuaded  to  agree.  But  Maria  Theresa's 
loyal  and  religious  mind  was  at  first  much  troubled  by  the 
proposals.  Informed  by  her  minister  at  Berlin  of  the  plot 
which  was  being  hatched  by  the  courts  of  Berlin  and  St. 
Petersburg,  she  wrote  a  confidential  note  to  him  on  the  subject, 
in  which  she  said,  "  I  confess  that  I  find  it  very  difficult  to 
come  to  a  decision  about  a  matter  concerning  which  I  cannot 
feel  sure  that  it  is  right ;  if  it  were  even  useful, — but  I  cannot 
see  the  utility.  AVhat  right  have  we  to  rob  the  innocent,  and 
one  too  whom  we  have  always  represented  ourselves  as  being 
ready  to  support  and  defend  ?     Why  should  there  be  all  these 


358  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

vast  and  costly  preparations  and  all  these  noisy  threats  to 
maintain  the  equilibrium  of  the  north  ?  The  sole  reason  of 
convenience,  not  to  be  the  only  one  among  all  the  powers 
gaining  no  advantage,  does  not  appear  to  me  sufficient,  nor 
even  an  honourable  pretext,  for  joining  two  unjust  usurpers 
whose  aim  is  to  destroy  a  third  without  any  justification.  I 
do  not  understand  a  policy  which,  when  two  use  their  power 
to  oppress  an  innocent  man,  requires  that  a  third  may  and 
ought  to  imitate  them  in  their  wrong-doing,  simply  as  a  matter 
of  precaution  for  the  future  and  convenience  for  the  present. 
That  appears  to  me  a  position  which  cannot  be  held.  What 
would  France,  Spain,  and  England  say  of  us  if  we  should  ally 
ourselves  so  closely  with  those  from  whom  we  have  held  our- 
selves aloof,  and  whose  actions  we  have  declared  unjust  ?  It 
would  be  to  give  the  lie  to  all  my  actions  during  the  thirty 
years  of  my  reign.  Let  us  try  rather  to  diminish  the  claims  of 
the  others,  instead  of  thinking  of  sharing  the  spoil  with  them 
under  conditions  so  unequal.  Let  us  rather  be  thought  weak 
than  wicked." 

In  another  document  which  bears  no  date,  Maria  Theresa 
tries  to  explain  the  reasons  which  have  induced  her  to  share  in 
the  partition.  "The  interests  of  our  own  safety  and  that  of 
the  whole  of  Europe,"  she  writes,  "  have  induced  us  to 
endeavour,  although  to  our  regret,  to  balance  that  increase  of 
power  which  Russia  and  Prussia  have  acquired,  by  reserving 
for  ourselves  that  part  of  the  land  in  dispute  to  which  we  had 
undoubted  clai?/is."  We  see  from  these  last  words  that  reasons  of 
state  had  triumphed  over  the  Christian  principles  of  the  queen. 

The  treaty  of  partition  was  signed  on  the  25th  of  July,  1772. 
It  has  been  said  that  Maria  Theresa  wrote  the  following  words 
with  her  own  hand  at  the  bottom  of  the  report  which  contained 
the  decision  as  to  its  adoption  : — "  Placet,  since  so  many  wise 
and  able  men  wish  that  it  should  be  so,  but  long  after  my 
death  the  consequences  will  be  seen  of  having  thus  despised 
what  has  hitherto  been  considered  just  and  righteous."  But 
this  document  is  not  to  be  found,  and  the  words  would  seem 


PARTITION  OF  POLAND.  359 

to  be  apocryphal.  The  real  sentiments  of  the  empress  after 
the  partition  are  to  be  found  in  the  passage  we  have  quoted, 
and  in  a  letter  to  Mercy,  Austrian  ambassador  to  the  court  of 
France.  In  this,  Maria  Theresa  at  the  same  time  regrets 
having  had  anything  to  do  with  it,  and  having  gained  too 
little  by  it.  "  They  have  led  us  by  the  nose,"  she  writes  of 
her  accomplices,  "  and  I  am  inconsolable.  If  I  could  find 
consolation  it  would  be  in  the  thought  that  I  was  always 
opposed  to  this  iniquitous  division,  which  has  been  so  unequal, 
and  to  any  alliance  with  these  two  monsters.  ...  I  was  unable 
to  go  to  war,  and  so  I  yielded,  but  much  against  my  convictions. 
I  hope  that  the  monarchy  will  not  suffer  from  it  after  I  am 
gone." 

On  another  occasion  she  wrote  to  Kaunitz,  "When  all  my 
dominions  were  threatened,  I  put  my  trust  in  my  rightful 
claims  and  in  the  help  of  God.  But  in  this  business,  where 
not  only  justice  cries  out  to  Heaven  against  us,  but  where 
every  reason  of  equity  and  common  sense  is  against  us,  I  must 
confess  that  I  have  never  in  my  life  suffered  so  terribly.  What 
an  example  do  we  set  to  the  world,  when  we  prostitute  our 
honour  and  our  reputation  for  a  bit  of  Poland,  or  of  Moldavia 
or  Wallachia  !  I  see  only  too  well  that  I  stand  alone  and  am 
no  longer  vigorous,  and  so  I  let  things  go  their  way,  but  not 
without  the  utmost  vexation."  Frederick  II.,  with  his  usual 
cynicism,  speaking  of  the  grief  of  Maria  Theresa,  said,  "  She  is 
always  weeping,  but  she  is  always  taking;"  and  she  herself 
has  described  her  position  in  words  which  at  any  rate  have 
the  merit  of  sincerity :  "  One  wishes  to  behave  like  the 
Prussians,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  to  keep  up  an  appearance 
of  respectability." 

The  presentiments  of  Maria  Theresa  have  been  partially 
realized,  and  the  possession  of  Galicia  has  at  times  been  a 
source  of  considerable  difficulty  to  the  Austrian  government, 
but  lately,  owing  to  a  curious  change  of  opinion,  the  Poles 
have  become  the  most  loyal  of  all  the  subjects  of  the  present 
emperor,  Francis  Joseph. 


36o  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

When  once  the  partition  was  resolved  on,  it  became 
necessary  to  find  some  good  pretext  for  accomplishing  it,  and 
the  queen  of  Hungary  and  Bohemia  proceeded  to  invoke  some 
ancient  rights,  real  or  imaginary,  which  the  two  kingdoms  were 
supposed  to  have  over  certain  portions  of  the  Polish  territory. 
As  early  as  1770  she  laid  claim  to  the  thirteen  towns  of  the 
county  of  Zips  (Szepes)  which  had  been  pledged  by  Sigismund, 
in  the  year  14x2,  to  Wladyslaw,  king  of  Poland,  and  had 
remained  in  pledge  for  three  hundred  and  fifty-nine  years. 
She  did  not  actually  take  possession  of  them  till  the  5th  of 
November,  1772,  when  the  towns  paid  homage  to  the  queen  of 
Hungary. 

In  September,  1772,  Austria  brought  forward  some  new 
claims.  "  Russia  and  Prussia  having  determined  to  insist  on 
their  ancient  rights  to  certain  districts  in  the  kingdom  of 
Poland,"  the  empress-queen  caused  fresh  territory  to  be 
occupied.  A  special  manifesto  explained  the  rights  of 
Hungary  over  Little  Russia  and  Podplia,  and  those  of 
Bohemia  over  the  duchies  of  Osviecim  (Ausschweitz)  and 
Zator.  Austria  thus  acquired  Red  Russia  and  part  of  Podolia, 
and  the  palatinates  of  Sandomir  and  Cracow,  with  the  rich  salt 
mines  of  Wieliczka  and  Bochnia,  the  whole  comprising  thirteen 
hundred  square  miles  and  two  million  five  hundred  thousand 
inhabitants.  These  new  possessions  received  the  official  title 
of  the  kingdom  of  Galicia  and  Lodomeria.  The  former  recalls 
the  name  of  the  old  town  of  Galitch,  the  home  of  the  Russian 
princes  ;  the  latter,  that  of  prince  Vladimir,  who  in  the  twelfth 
century  ruled  over  the  country  of  the  Little  Russians.  The  title 
of  king  of  Galicia  and  Lodomeria  had  already  been  borne  by 
the  kings  of  Hungary.  In  spite  of  her  honourable  intentions, 
Maria  Theresa  was  careful  not  to  unite  her  new  possessions 
either  to  Hungary  or  Bohemia,  whose  independent  spirit  she 
held  in  fear ;  she  preferred  to  make  them  immediately  depen- 
dent on  the  crown.  The  capital  of  the  new  country  was  fixed 
at  Lemberg,  which  is  called  by  the  Poles  Lwow,  and  by  the 
Little  Russians  Lviv.     In  1773,  a  royal  rescript  organized  the 


ACQUISITION  OF  BUKOVINA.  36 1 

government ;  on  the  29th  of  December,  the  Estates — clergy, 
nobles,  and  citizens — had  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
Austrian  dynast)',  and  the  government  was  placed  in  the  hands 
of  German  officials.  In  1775,  the  country  was  divided  into 
eighteen  circles,  and  in  each  of  the  chief  towns  a  normal 
school  was  established  for  the  teaching  of  German,  now  be- 
come the  official  language.  Latin,  however,  was  still  used  in 
the  courts  of  justice.  The  estates  were  organized  in  the  same 
manner  as  those  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary.  We  shall  see  later 
on  what  disputes  were  caused  in  Austrian  Galicia  by  the 
rivalry  which  existed  between  the  Poles  and  the  Little  Russians, 
who  divided  the  country  between  them. 

Joseph  II.  had  taken  much  greater  interest  than  his  mother 
in  the  partition  of  Poland,  and  certainly  had  not  shared  her 
scruples.  In  1778,  we  find  him  visiting  the  new  provinces, 
anxious,  no  doubt,  to  study  on  the  spot  the  results  of  that 
(iermanizing  system,  which  he  was  hoping  to  apply  to  all  his 
other  dominions. 

Acquisition  of  Bukovina  (1775) — War  of  the  Bavarian 
Succession  (1779). 

Bukovina  was  another  gain  to  Austria,  though  not  so  im- 
portant a  one  as  Galicia.  It  was  the  result  of  a  war  between 
Russia  and  Turkey  which  lasted  several  years.  Austria  and 
Turkey  had  lived  in  peace  with  each  other  since  the  treaty  of 
Belgrade,  but  the  attention  of  the  Austrian  cabinet  had  been 
necessarily  drawn  to  the  campaign  of  the  Russians  against  the 
Turks.  Russia  had  seized  the  Crimea  and  was  approaching 
the  Danube,  when  Maria  Theresa  grew  anxious,  assembled  an 
army  in  Hungar}',  and  attempted  to  bring  about  a  peace.  This 
was  in  1772,  but  it  was  not  until  1774  that  the  Porte  agreed 
to  the  treaty  of  Kuchuk  Kainardji,  which  secured  to  Russia 
the  conquered  territory  and  left  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  to 
Turkey.  Austria  took  advantage  of  these  circumstances  to 
occupy  some  portion  of  Moldavia  with  troops.  The  reasons 
given  to  the  Porte  for  this  sudden  occupation  were  scarcely 


362  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

better  than  those  which  had  previously  been  used  to  Poland 
at  the  time  of  its  partition.  Austria  asserted  that  the  occupied 
land  was  necessary  to  her  as  a  means  of  communication  be- 
tween Galicia  and  Transylvania,  and  to  enable  her  to  prevent 
the  desertion  of  soldiers ;  also  that  a  great  part  of  Moldavia 
had  once  belonged  to  Podolia,  which  was  now  an  Austrian 
possession.  Turkey  protested ;  Russia  and  Prussia  demanded 
explanations.  But  the  Turks  were  without  allies,  and  on  the 
7th  of  May,  1775,  they  were  obliged  to  yield  and  sign  a  treaty 
giving  up  the  disputed  territory.  It  contained  about  one 
hundred  and  eighty-nine  square  miles,  four  small  towns,  and 
about  sixty  villages,  but  from  a  strategic  point  of  view  it  was 
of  great  importance.  Ghika,  hospodar  of  Moldavia,  whose 
principality  was  dismembered  by  the  treaty,  tried  to  prevent 
the  people  from  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance,  but  he  was  seized 
by  the  Turks,  and  his  head  was  cut  off.  His  memory  is  still 
held  sacred  by  the  Roumanians  as  that  of  a  martyr  to  liberty. 
The  poi^ulation  of  Bukovina  is  composed  largely  of  Little 
Russians  and  Roumanians.  In  1875,  the  Austrian  government 
celebrated  the  centenary  of  its  annexation  by  founding  a 
German  university  at  Czernowitz  whose  business  it  is  to  help 
in  the  Gertnanizing  of  the  land. 

Thus  Maria  Theresa  and  her  son  practised  that  policy  of 
rounding  off  territories  by  annexation  which  Frederick  had 
made  the  fashion  by  his  conquest  of  Silesia.  The  principles  of 
Joseph  II.  in  such  matters  were  precisely  similar  to  those  of 
the  king  of  Prussia.  In  1779,  died  Maximilian  Joseph, 
elector  of  Bavaria.  Thereupon,  in  his  own  right  as  emperor, 
and  in  right  of  his  mother  as  sovereign  of  Austria  and  Bohemia, 
Joseph  II.  laid  claim  to  the  electorate,  and  showed  himself 
prepared  to  support  his  claim  by  arms,  if  needful.  The  rightful 
heir,  the  elector  palatine  Charles  Theodore,  was  so  much 
alarmed  at  these  threats  that  he  agreed  to  a  treaty  by  which 
he  abandoned  to  Austria  almost  half  of  Bavaria. 

On  this  Frederick  II.,  always  jealous  of  any  increase  of  the 
power  of  Austria,  took  up  arms  and  entered  Bohemia.     But 


7  RE  A  TY  OF  TESIN.  ^e^ 

the  war  proved  of  little  military  importance,  and  was  prosecuted 
without  vigour,  consisting  only  of  a  series  of  patrols,  manoeuvres, 
and  reconnaissances.  The  Austrians  called  it  Zwetschge7irummel 
(the  Plum  Skirmish),  and  the  Germans,  Kartoffelkrieg  (the 
Potato  War).  "  Chienne  de  guerre  politique  !  "  growled  old 
Loudon,  who  was  used  to  more  heroic  struggles.  The  mediation 
of  France  and  Russia  brought  about  the  treaty  of  Tesin  (Tes- 
chen)  in  1779,  ^"d  in  this  treaty  Austria  consented  to  accept 
considerably  less  than  she  had  claimed.  Maria  Theresa  only 
kept  the  Innviertel,  a  district  situated  between  Salzburg  and 
Passau,  on  the  Lower  Inn  and  the  Salza.  It  includes  about 
thirty-eight  square  miles,  and  Braunau  on  the  Inn  is  the  chief 
town.  The  treaty  of  Tesin  was  prepared  and  concluded  by 
Thugut  and  Cobenzel,  two  statesmen  who  afterwards  became 
celebrated,  and  was  the  last  diplomatic  act  of  the  reign  of 
Maria  Theresa.  She  died  soon  after  it,  on  the  29th  of  No- 
vember, 1780.  On  her  death  the  Austrian  dominions,  in- 
cluding the  Low  Countries  and  Italian  possessions,  comprised 
eleven  thousand  and  ninety-five  square  miles. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

BOHEMIA,    HUNGARY,    AND    AUSTRIA    UNDER    MARIA    THERESA. 

Bohemia. 

In  the  reign  of  Maria  Theresa,  Bohemia,  which  had  already 
been  so  cruelly  tried,  became  once  more  the  battle-field  of  the 
enemies  of  the  house  of  Austria.  In  1741,  the  elector  of 
Bavaria  pushed  his  way  as  far  as  Prague,  and  there  summoned 
the  Estates.  Four  hundred  nobles  and  knights,  whose  lands 
were  occupied  by  his  troops,  answered  the  summons  and  took 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  him  in  the  cathedral  of  St.  Vit, 
Maurice,  prince  of  Manderscheid  and  archbishop  of  Prague, 
himself  officiating  on  the  occasion, — so  weak  was  still  the  tie 
Avhich  attached  the  kingdom  to  the  house  of  Austria  !  The 
Chekhs  had  little  reason  to  love  the  dynasty,  and  a  change  of 
master  was  a  matter  of  small  importance  to  them.  The  high 
state  dignitaries  were  the  only  persons  who  remained  true  to 
the  queen,  and  they  quitted  the  capital.  Charles  of  Bavaria 
instituted  a  provisional  government,  at  the  head  of  which  he 
placed  Philip  Krakovsky  of  Kolovrat ;  established  a  chancery 
for  the  Bohemian  kingdom  in  Munich ;  convoked  the  diet  in 
order  to  obtain  supplies  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war ;  and 
then  returned  to  Germany.  It  was  by  him,  as'king  of  Bohemia, 
that  the  county  of  Glatz  (Kladsko)  was  given  up  to  Frederick, 
but  Maria  Theresa  was  afterwards  obliged  to  ratify  the  agree- 
ment.    Later  on,  the    French    invaded    Bohemia   under  the 


CONDITION  OF  BOHEMIA.  365 

command  of  Marshal  Belle-Isle,  and  Prague  was  occupied  by 
them. 

It  was  not  until  April,  17  43,  that  Maria  Theresa  entered 
Prague  and  was  crowned  by  the  bishop  of  Olomouc.  In  order 
in  future  to  prevent  the  coronation  of  a  foreigner  with  the 
Bohemian  crown,  and  also  gradually  to  destroy  its  historic 
value,  she  had  it  taken  to  Vienna.  The  loss  of  Silesia  deprived 
the  kingdom  of  St.  Vacslav  of  a  third  of  its  territory.  The 
queen  called  upon  the  Estates  to  ratify  the  arrangement,  wish- 
ing to  divide  with  them  her  responsibility  in  the  matter,  and 
she  afterwards  thanked  them  for  their  help.  But  Bohemia  had 
other  sacrifices  to  make  besides  that  of  Silesia.  It  gave  up  all 
control  over  the  army  ;  agreed  that  appeals  should  in  future  be 
carried  to  Vienna  ;  that  the  chancery  of  Bohemia  should  be 
absorbed  in  the  high  chancery  of  the  court,  and  that  the 
criminal  law  should  in  future  be  the  same  as  that  of  the  rest  of 
the  Austrian  dominions.  An  archbishopric  of  Olomouc  was 
created,  and  Moravia  removed  by  this  means  from  the  spiritual 
jurisdiction  of  Prague.  And  finally  the  German  language  was 
introduced  into  all  schools  and  offices,  as  the  sole  official 
language  of  administration  and  instruction.  These  were  hard 
blows  to  the  Chekh  nationality.  A  census  taken  in  the  reign 
of  Maria  Theresa  gave  the  number  of  males  in  the  kingdom 
as  twelve  hundred  thousand,  implying  a  population  probably 
of  two  millions  and  a  half.  Immediately  after  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  ifhad  been  but  eight  hundred  thousand. 

Maria  Theresa  gained  some  amount  of  popularity  in  Bohemia 
by  one  single  act — her  edict  about  forced  labour,  which  was 
issued  in  1773.  The  peasants  did  not  at  first  understand  the 
new  regulations,  and  believed  that  the  queen  had  released  them 
from  all  dues  and  that  her  agents  hid  the  truth  from  them. 
They  marched  to  Prague  in  bands,  in  order  to  see  the  real 
text  of  the  royal  document,  and  burned  and  pillaged  the  castles 
on  the  road.  It  took  a  large  army  to  reduce  them  to  order, 
and  general  Wallis  had  great  difficulty  in  protecting  the  capital. 
After  the  loss  of  Silesia,  Maria  Theresa  had  two  fortresses  built, 


^66  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

one   called  Terezin  (Theresienstadt)  and   the   other   Josefov 
(Josephstadt),  to  protect  the  country  from  Prussian  invasion. 

Hungary — '■^  Moriamur pro  rege  nostra." 

"We  have  seen  how  the  house  of  Austria  never  ceased  to 
oppress  the  Hungarian  nobles.  They  knew  not  how  precious 
they  would  one  day  become  to  them.  They  sought  among 
that  nation  money  which  it  had  not,  and  never  saw  the  value  of 
the  men  it  had.  When  a  throng  of  princes  divided  its  terri- 
tories among  themselves,  the  various  parts  of  the  monarchy 
became  as  it  were  a  motionless  and  inert  mass  ;  no  life  remained 
except  among  that  nobility,  which  grew  wrathful  and  then  forgot 
its  wrath  to  take  up  arms,  and  found  its  glory  in  pardoning 
and  in  dying  for  those  who  had  injured  it."  These  words  of 
Montesquieu  express,  with  the  brevity  habitual  to  the  author 
of  "  L'Esprit  des  Lois,"  the  feeling  of  admiration  which  the 
devotion  of  the  Magyars  to  Maria  Theresa  roused  throughout 
Europe.  Those  who  do  not  know  the  Hungarians  have  seen 
in  this  devotion  nothing  but  the  expression  of  their  knightly 
feelings  ;  but  the  Magyars  are  legists  as  well  as  knights,  and 
these  opposite  characteristics  of  the  race  find  their  expression 
in  the  characters  of  Verboczy  and  Rakoczy.  We  must  now 
explain  with  some  detail  the  legendary  and  picturesque  event 
which  is  associated  with  the  celebrated  words,  '■'■  Moriamur pro 
rege  nostro  Maria  Theresa  !  " 

Charles  VI.  had  not  been  content  with  the  recognition  of 
his  daughter  as  his  heir  by  the  kingdom  of  Hungary;  he  had 
also  wished  that  his  son-in-law,  Francis  of  Lorraine,  should 
enter  into  personal  relations  with  the  Magyar  nation.  On  the 
death  of  the  palatine  Palffy,  in  1732,  he  did  not  make  a  new 
appointment  to  this  high  office,  but  instead  gave  his  son-in-law 
the  title  of  royal  lieutenant.  Now,  the  Hungarians  were 
exceedingly  anxious,  and  all  the  more  so  since  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction,  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  mass  of  hereditary 
states.  When  Charles  VI.  died  his  successor  had  not  yet  been 
crowned.     Should  Francis  of  Lorraine  ascend  the  Hungarian 


"  MORIAMUR  PRO  REGE  NOSTRO."  367 

throne  with  his  wife,  and  should  he,  as  seemed  ah-eady  ahnost 
certain,  be  elected  emperor,  Hungary  would  run  great  risk  of 
becoming  merely  an  appendage  to  Germany,  If,  on  the 
contrary,  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen  were  placed  on  the  head  of 
Maria  Theresa  alone,  there  would  be  far  greater  hope  of  pre- 
serving the  historic  individuality  of  Hungary. 

On  the  death  of  her  father,  Maria  Theresa  had  entrusted 
the  government  to  John  Palfify,  field-marshal  and  judex  curiae, 
the  old  companion-in-arms  of  prince  Eugbne.  She  gave  him 
full  powers,  and  promised  to  respect  the  liberties  of  the  kingdom, 
and  to  convoke  a  diet  before  long.  This  diet  was  held  in 
May,  1 741,  and  the  debates  in  it  were  very  animated,  the 
majority  of  the  members  being  opposed  to  the  idea  of  the 
husband  of  the  new  queen  being  associated  with  her  on  the 
throne.  Some  days  later,  the  queen  received  a  deputation  at 
Vienna,  bringing  her  the  congratulations  of  the  diet,  not  only 
on  her  accession,  but  also  on  the  birth  of  the  future  Joseph  H. 
This  deputation  received  fresh  assurances  that  the  privileges 
of  the  kingdom  should  be  respected,  and  that  the  queen  would 
very  shortly  come,  to  Pozsony  (Pressburg).  She  embarked  on 
the  Danube  on  the  19th  of  July,  her  boat  being  decorated  with 
the  Hungarian  colours,  red,  white,  and  green.  On  the  frontier 
she  was  saluted  with  cries  of  "  Vivat  domina  et  rex  noster  !  " — 
the  title  of  J?ex  having  been  given  by  the  Hungarians  to  the  only 
woman  who  had  reigned  before  her  in  Hungary.  On  the  2rst, 
in  the  castle  of  Pozsony,  she  received  the  homage  of  the  diet, 
and  in  a  Latin  speech  renewed  the  promises  which  she  had 
already  made  to  Palffy.  She  undertook  to  maintain  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  the  kingdom — with  the  single  exception 
of  the  thirty-first  article  of  the  Golden  Bull,  which  proclaimed 
the  right  of  insurrection ;  —  to  leave  the  sacred  crown  in 
Hungary;  and  to  renew  all  the  clauses  of  the  Pragmatic 
Sanction. 

The  diet  was  full  of  sympathy  for  the  young  queen,  whose 
graceful  manner  conciliated  the  hearts  of  even  the  fiercest,  but 
it  was  careful  not  to  yield  to  her  one  of  the  privileges  of  the 


368  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

country.  It  insisted  that  the  nobles  should  be  free  from 
taxation  ;  that  the  peasant  and  not  the  land  should  be  taxed  ; 
that  Transylvania  should  remain  indissolubly  united  to 
Hungary ;  and  that  Hungarians  alone  should  hold  office. 
Their  deliberations  were  noisy.  But,  fortunately  for  Maria 
Theresa,  the  diet  chose  Palffy  as  palatine,  and  he  professed  the 
most  chivalrous  devotion  to  the  queen.  He  gained  over  the 
most  troublesome  members,  and  persuaded  the  diet  to  leave  all 
questions  then  pending  to  be  decided  after  the  coronation. 
That  ceremony,  which  has  always  excited  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  Mao^yars,  who  are  exceedingly  jealous  of  their  autonomy 
and  devotedly  attached  to  the  holy  crown,  took  place  now 
under  circumstances  of  especial  interest.  It  was  a  young  and 
beautiful  princess  whose  brow  was  encircled  by  the  hereditary 
diadem,  and  who,  mounted  on  a  fiery  courser,  brandished  the 
sword  of  St.  Stephen  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe  from  the 
top  of  the  King's  Hill. 

"  She  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  women  in  Europe," 
writes  an  English  eye-witness.  "  Her  figure  was  elegant  and 
her  bearing  majestic.  Her  eyes  were  expressive  and  full  of 
sweetness.  It  was  only  a  short  time  before  that  she  had  given 
birth  to  her  son,  and  a  look  of  delicacy  which  still  remained 
lent  a  new  charm  to  her  features.  Everything  about  her  was 
charming.  This  portrait,  which  is  not  in  the  least  flattered, 
ought  to  be  present  in  the  mind  of  every  one  who  recalls  the 
enthusiasm  which  this  princess  inspired  in  the  Hungarians." 

And  yet  disputes  began  again  directly  after  the  coronation ; 
even  the  hundred  thousand  florins,  which  were  to  be  a  "gift 
on  her  joyful  accession,"  became  the  subject  of  bargaining ; 
and  the  Magyar  passion  for  legal  forms  expressed  itself  in 
a  number  of  vexatious  quibbles  which  drew  tears  from  the 
eyes  of  the  young  queen.  The  first  scene  of  the  sensational 
story  which  has  been  so  much  exaggerated  in  the  telling  by 
contemporary  writers  took  place  on  the  13th  of  September, 
1740.  The  queen  had  summoned  the  two  Tables  to  the  castle 
of  Pozsony,  and  appeared  before  them  dressed  in  mourning, 


CONCESSIO.XS   TO  HUNGARY.  .  369 

the  crown  upon  her  head,  the  sword  of  St.  Stephen  by  her 
side.  The  dangers  which  threatened  her  and  the  country  were 
first  enumerated  by  Louis  Batthyany,  the  chancellor,  and  Maria 
I'heresa  herself  then  made  a  short  Latin  speech  calling  upon  the 
assembly  to  provide  for  the  safety  of  herself,  her  children,  and 
her  crown.  Her  speech,  which  was  mingled  with  tears,  called 
forth  considerable  but  suppressed  emotion,  which  grew  during 
the  reply  of  the  primate,  the  nobles  interrupting  him  with  cries 
of  "  Vitatn  et  sanguhiem  !  "  and  a  levy  of  one  hundred  thousand 
men  was  at  once  decided  on.  On  the  20th  of  September,  in 
another  sitting,  the  prince  consort  was  accepted  as  co-regent  of 
the  kingdom.  On  the  21st  he  took  the  oaths  and  promised  to 
devote  his  blood  and  his  life  to  the  queen  and  to  Hungary,  and 
it  was  on  this  occasion  that  Maria  Theresa  showed  her  young 
son,  w^ho  had  arrived  from  Esztergom  (Gratz)  only  the  evening 
before,  to  the  assembled  diet,  and  that  the  celebrated  cry  broke 
forth,  "  Moriamjir  pro  rege  nostra  Maria  Theresa  !  "  It  was 
not  the  spontaneous  expression  of  chivalrous  feeling ;  it  was 
the  result  of  prolonged  negociations  and  of  emotions  skilfully 
called  forth.  Contemporaries  themselves  were  misled,  and 
concentrated  into  one  single  moment  all  the  phases  of  an 
event  of  whose  details  they  were  ignorant.  This  diet,  which 
broke  up  on  the  29th  of  October,  had  in  fact  devoted  itself 
almost  entirely  to  the  preservation  of  Hungarian  interests. 
The  queen  had  been  obliged  to  agree  to  all  its  demands,  which 
were,  indeed,  perfectly  lawful ;  she  had  consented  to  the  sup- 
pression of  the  military  frontiers  in  Sirmia  and  Lower  Slavonia, 
in  the  comitats  of  Bacs,  Bodrog,  Csongrad,  Arad,  Csanad, 
and  in  the  banat  of  the  Temes,  and  she  had  obtained,  in  ex- 
change for  these  concessions,  the  help  she  needed  to  enable 
her  to  continue  the  war. 

.  The  enthusiasm  of  the  Hungarians  did  not  pass  away  with 
the  circumstances  which  had  given  birth  to  it.  Maria  Theresa 
owed  some  of  her  best  troops  to  them ;  the  Servians  and 
Croats  commanded  by  Baron  Von  Trenck  acquired  a  legendary 
reputation  for  their  valour  and  their  cruelty.      These  fierce 

2    B 


3/0  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

fandoars,  used  to  war  with  Turks  and  now  thrown  suddenly 
into  the  midst  of  civilized  Europe,  brought  with  them  the 
half-savage  habits  which  they  had  learned  in  their  frequent 
contact  with  Asiatic  hordes.  The  devotion  of  the  Magyars 
to  Maria  Theresa  was  proved  on  many  a  field  of  battle,  and 
their  horsemen  penetrated  as  far  as  Berlin,  and  even  to  Alsace. 
Frederick  II.,  with  the  skill  which  so  often  aided  Prussian 
ambition,  tried  to  destroy  the  fidelity  of  the  Hungarians  to  their 
queen  by  recalling  to  their  minds  their  insurrections  in  times 
past,  and  the  services  then  rendered  to  them  by  the  house  of 
Brandenburg ;  but  his  efforts  were  in  vain. 

The  Feasant  Question — The  Military  Frontiers. 

This  exchange  of  services  between  the  Magyar  nobles  and 
the  court  of  Vienna  formed  a  tie  between  them  such  as  had 
never  previously  existed.  The  great  nobles  were  assiduous  in 
their  attendance  at  the  palaces  of  Vienna,  Schonbrunn,  and 
Laxenburg,  and  contact  with  the  Bohemian  and  Austrian 
nobility  and  the  gentle  influence  of  the  empress-queen  led 
them  gradually  to  give  up  the  favourite  national  dress  and 
national  language,  and  to  seek  and  obtain  the  foreign  titles  of 
prince,  count,  or  baron.  A  body-guard  of  Hungarians  was 
at  this  time  formed  at  Vienna,  and  the  order  of  St.  Stephen 
instituted,  and,  by  means  of  ingeniously  contrived  marriages 
and  a  whole  system  of  cleverly  devised  temptations,  the  higher 
nobility  were  persuaded  to  allow  themselves  to  be  Gerttianized. 
But  the  landed  gentry  (^petite  noblesse)  remained  incorruptible, 
and  in  the  discussions  of  the  Lower  Table  and  at  the  meetings 
of  the  comitats  they  continued  to  defend  with  invincible 
obstinacy  the  pockets  and  the  privileges  of  their  order. 

The  disputes  between  the  queen  and  the  chambers  turned 
upon  two  essential  questions,  the  condition  of  the  peasants 
and  the  constitution  of  the  military  frontiers.  In  Hungary  the 
peasants  were  serfs  of  the  soil.  Both  the  philanthropic  ideas 
of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  financial  interests  of  the 
kingdom  required  the  abolition  of  serfdom.     It  is  more  easy 


THE  PEASANT  QUESTION.  3/1 

to  tax  land,  which  is  a  stable  element,  than  the  person  who 
cultivates  it,  and  who  is,  from  the  nature  of  things,  liable  to 
constant  changes.  The  queen  asked  for  a  reform  of  the  old 
system ;  the  nobles  replied  by  a  series  of  complaints  against 
the  encroachments  of  the  German  officials,  against  the  council 
of  regency,  against  the  powers  of  the  military  commanders 
and  agoiinst  the  title  of  Landtag  (local  diet),  which  had  been 
applied,  perhaps  designedly,  to  the  Hungarian  diet,  instead 
of  that  of  Reichstag,  or  diet  of  the  kingdom.  The  queen, 
however,  issued,  and  by  dint  of  perseverance  succeeded  in 
enforcing,  an  edict  which  remained  the  fundamental  law  regu- 
lating the  life  of  the  peasant  down  to  the  year  1832.  This  was 
called  an  urbarimn,  from  the  German  word  Jirbar,  a  term  applied 
to  administrative  rules  or  traditional  customs  affecting  the 
relations  between  lord  and  peasant.  By  the  urbarium  of 
Maria  Theresa,  peasants  obtained  the  rights  of  moving  from 
place  to  place  and  of  bringing  up  their  children  as  they  wished, 
and  all  suits  in  which  they  might  be  engaged  were  in  future 
to  be  tried  before  the  courts  of  the  comitat.  These  liberal 
measures  were  only  accepted  by  the  nobles  with  the  greatest 
reluctance ;  but  they  found  some  compensation  in  the  matter 
of  the  military  frontiers. 

The  old  system  of  the  court  at  Vienna  had  aimed  at  the 
complete  separation  of  the  frontier  lands  from  the  kingdom  of 
St.  Stephen.  It  was  argued  that  they  had  been  freed  from 
Turkish  rule  by  the  imperial  armies,  and  therefore  ought  to 
belong  to  the  emperor.  Moreover,  the  Slav  populations  of 
those  districts  were  of  alien  nationality,  and  had  no  sort  of 
wish  to  be  united  to  the  Magyars,  preferring  their  present 
obligations  of  military  service  to  the  condition  of  the  oppressed 
Servians  of  the  comitats.  Among  other  privileges,  they  pos- 
sessed those  of  holding  an  assembly  of  their  own,  and  of 
choosing  their  own  bishop.  Maria  Theresa,  however,  was 
obliged  to  yield  to  the  demands  of  the  Hungarians,  and  to 
consent  to  suppress  the  frontiers  of  the  Ti«za  and  the  Maros 
(1750).     In  consequence  of  this,  no  less  than  one  hundred 


372  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

thousand  Servians  left  the  country  and,  under  their  leaders 
Horvat  and  Tokdly,  settled  in  Russia,  in  the  province  of 
Ekaterinoslav.  The  Austro-Hungarian  army  lost  some  of  its 
best  soldiers  by  the  exodus,  and  the  grdnzer  (soldiers  of  the 
frontier),  who  remained  in  the  country  in  a  state  of  great 
discontent,  in  1755  rose  in  a  rebellion  which  was  not  sup- 
pressed without  bloodshed.  Owing  to  the  remonstrance  of 
the  Hungarians,  the  Servians  were  in  1776  forbidden  any 
longer  to  maintain  an  agent  at  Vienna  to  look  after  their 
interests;  and  at  last,  in  1779,  the  lands  between  the  Maros, 
the  Tisza,  the  Danube,  and  the  Carpathians  were  incorporated 
with  the  rest  of  the  kingdom,  and  formed  into  three  comitats, 
those  of  Torontol,  Krasso,  and  Temes.  Thus  Hungary  re- 
covered the  territory  which  had  been  gradually  separated  from 
her  by  Vienna.  The  partition  of  Poland  ought  also  to  have 
restored  to  her  the  towns  in  the  county  of  Szepes  (Zips) ;  but 
Maria  Theresa  refused  to  annex  this  new  acquisition  to  the 
kingdom,  although  she  had  laid  claim  to  Galicia  on  the  ground 
of  ancient  rights  belonging  to  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen. 

In  1765,  she  associated  her  son  Joseph  with  herself  in  the 
government,  and  some  of  the  measures  decided  on  after  this 
date  would  seem  to  have  been  inspired  by  the  philosophic 
mind  of  this  prince ;  as,  for  example,  the  suppression  of  the 
right  of  sanctuary  and  of  the  mendicant  orders,  the  develop- 
ment of  public  instruction,  and  the  foundation  of  numerous 
village  schools.  The  Hungarians  are  grateful  to  him  to  this 
day  for  having  given  them  the  port  of  Fiume  (Rieka),  which 
had  formerly  been  dependent  on  Trieste.  It  is  still  a  matter 
of  dispute  whether  the  town  of  Rieka  was  united  to  Croatia  or 
to  Hungary  proper.'  The  possession  of  the  town  has  been 
claimed  most  energetically  by  the  Croats,  but  the  government 
at  Vienna  has  decided  finally  that  if  belongs  to  Hungary. 

To  sum  up  :  on  the  death  of  Maria  Theresa  the  kingdom 
was  materially  in  a  flourishing  condition,  but  from  a  national 
point  of  view  it  was  enfeebled,  and  had  lost  the  greater  part 
of  those  ancient   rights  whose  maintenance  was  so  dear  to 


PROGRESS   OF  CENTRALIZATION.  373 

patriots.  The  diet  of  the  kingdom,  which,  according  to  the 
Golden  Bull,  ought  to  meet  every  year,  met  only  three  times 
during  the  whole  of  her  reign. 

Reforms  in  Administration  and  Education. 

It  was  the  ceaseless  aim  of  Maria  Theresa  to  develop  the 
authority  of  the  prince,  and  to  diminish  that  of  the  Estates  in 
the  Hereditary  Provinces,  as  well  as  in  the  kingdoms  of  Bohemia 
and  Hungary.  Almost  all  the  executive  power  had  hitherto 
been  in  the  hands  of  the  prelates,  lords,  knights,  and  a  few 
privileged  towns;  justice  was  administered  by  the  towns  or 
the  lords  ;  the  roads  were  bad  and  the  militia  managed  on 
no  regular  system.  In  the  reign  of  Maria  Theresa,  govern- 
ment began  to  interfere  with  the  churches  and  schools,  and 
took  pains  to  secure  to  the  inhabitants  of  towns  the  position 
which  had  hitherto  been  refused  them.  The  empress  retained, 
on  her  accession,  the  principal  advisers  of  her  father,  Zinzen- 
dorf,  Kinsky,  and  Harrach.  After  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
she  made  Frederick  William  of  Haugwitz  chancellor  of  Austria, 
in  which  post  he  rendered  her  important  services.  Maria 
Theresa  wrote  to  his  widow,  "  Haugwitz  brought  the  govern- 
ment out  of  confusion  into  order."  Later  on,  she  united  the 
two  chanceries  of  Bohemia  and  Austria.  Chotek  was  called 
upon  to  reform  the  finances,  and  Kaunitz  foreign  affairs. 

The  following  were  the  principal  measures  taken  to  increase 
the  power  of  the  central  government.  The  power  of  voting  a 
certain  number  of  indirect  taxes,  such  as  those  on  salt,  tobacco, 
and  stamps,  was  taken  from  the  diets.  The  Estates  were  in 
future  to  be  required  to  present  their  budgets  to  the  court  of 
accounts  at  Vienna  (^Hofrechnungkammer).  All  political  power 
was  taken  from  them  and  vested  in  the  royal  lieutenant.  The 
peasants  were  relieved  from  some  portion  of  their  labour  services 
and  seignorial  dues.  Up  to  this  time  the  central  administration 
had  been  divided  between  the  chanceries  of  Austria,  Bohemia, 
Hungary,  and  Transylvania,  but  the  imperial  chancery  and  the 
council  of  war  had  exercised  jurisdiction  over  all  the  territories, 


374  HIS70RY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

except  those  in  Italy  and  the  Low  Countries,  and  with  these  we 
have  nothing  to  do.  The  patent  of  the  14th  of  May,  1749, 
separated  the  admistration  of  justice  from  the  legislative  and 
executive  functions  of  government,  and  decreed  the  union  of  the 
Bohemian  and  Austrian  chanceries  in  one  supreme  power,  called 
at  first  the  Directory  of  the  Interior  {Directorhwi  in  Tnfernis), 
and  afterwards  the  United  Chancery  of  the  Imperial  and  Royal 
court  {Kaiserliche  Konigliche  Vereinigte  Hofkanzlei).  Thus 
did  the  absolute  monarchy  take  the  first  steps  towards  the 
arrangement  now  in  force  under  the  parliamentary  system  of 
Cisleithania.  In  1760,  Maria  Theresa  also  instituted  a  council 
of  state  whose  business  it  was  to  watch  over  the  whole  ad- 
ministration. Administrative  power  was  gradually  withdrawn 
from  the  permanent  committees  of  the  provincial  diets,  and 
vested  in  the  representative  of  the  sovereign  power,  giiberniuni 
(lieutenancy  or  agency) ;  and  the  Estates  were  only  allowed  to 
meet  in  order  to  vote  money  to  the  crown.  OfiEicials  were 
appointed  by  the  court  in  those  circles  from  which  they  had 
hitherto  been  excluded,  and  they  became  the  representatives 
of  the  central  authority,  and  were  required  to  protect  the 
peasants  against  their  lords. 

The  peasants,  without  being  serfs — except  in  Hungary — 
were  almost  absolutely  dependent  on  the  territorial  lords ;  they 
had  not  the  ownership,  but  only  the  usufruct  of  their  holdings  ; 
without  the  lord's  permission  they  could  neither  quit  the  estate, 
nor  marry,  nor  bring  up  their  children  to  any  other  business 
than  that  of  agricultural  labourer;  and  they  were  bound  to 
perform  many  services,  which  were  known  by  the  Slav  name 
of  robot,  corresponding  to  the  corvee  of  France.  Maria 
Theresa  set  herself  to  improve  their  condition.  She  had  a 
new  survey  of  the  land  taken,  in  order  to  be  able  to  regulate 
the  land-tax,  and  put  an  end  to  that  exemption  from  taxation 
which  the  territorial  lords  had  hitherto  enjoyed.  These  mea- 
sures suited  not  only  the  needs  of  the  treasury,  but  also  the 
humanitarian  ideas  which  were  coming  into  favour.  They 
were  enforced  in  all  the  Cisleithanian  states  except  the  Tyrol, 


REFORM  OF  THE   COMMUNAL  SYSTEM.  375 

(lOrica.  Gradiska,  and  Trieste,  where  feudal  institutions  were 
but  little  known.  The  policy  of  Maria  Theresa  was  to  improve 
the  condition  of  the  peasants  in  order  to  weaken  the  nobles ; 
to  attract  the  great  nobles  to  Vienna,  so  that  their  influence 
should  be  lessened ;  and,  by  uniting  the  aristocracy  of  the 
various  portions  of  her  empire,  to  bring  about  the  unity  of  the 
monarchy. 

The  reform  of  the  communal  system  presented  great  diffi- 
culties. Down  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
were  the  most  radical  differences  in  the  constitutions  of  the 
various  communes.  Some  of  them  depended  upon  a  lay,  others 
upon  an  ecclesiastical  lord  ;  while  others,  especially  cities  and 
towns,  were  under  the  immmediate  authority  of  the  sovereign. 
Some  of  them  were  in  possession  of  complete  freedom,  while 
others  were  tyrannized  over  by  their  lords  or  by  the  royal 
agents.  Some  of  the  towns  possessed  the  rights  of  representa- 
tion in  the  diet.  Their  constitutions  differed  as  much  as  did 
those  of  the  Italian  republics  :  here  the  government  was  aristo- 
cratic, there  a  pure  democracy  ;  here  municipal  offices  were 
hereditary,  there  elective.  The  institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages — 
as,  for  example,  the  guilds — were  still  vigorous,  and  we  find  town 
burgesses  and  "  burgesses  of  the  suburbs,"  "  great  burgesses  " 
and  "small  burgesses;"  while  in  those  towns  which  were  under 
Italian  influence,  such  as  Trieste  and  Gorica,  there  existed  a 
patriciate,  or  hereditary  aristocracy.  After  1 748,  these  mediaeval 
institutions  began  to  disappear,  and  one  of  the  laws  passed  in 
1776,  proclaiming  as  it  did  freedom  of  trade,  attacked  the 
principle  on  which  trading  corporations  or  guilds  were  based. 
Maria  Theresa  also  appointed  a  body  of  magistrates  who 
administered  justice  and  took  the  place  of  the  old  local  courts. 

In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  law  of  the 
country  was  solely  made  up  of  prescriptive  rights  and  local 
customs,  whose  deficiencies  were  supplied  from  civil,  i.e.  Roman 
law,  canon  law,  or,  in  some  provinces,  imperial  decrees.  The 
fundamental  principle  was  that  every  citizen  should  be  judged  by 
his  peers.     Clergy,  universities,  nobles,  public  officials,  citizens. 


3/6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

peasants,  and  Jews  all  had  their  separate  tribunals.  From  the 
lords  on  their  estates  and  the  magistrates  in  the  towns  there 
was  no  appeal.  Punishments  were  still  barbarous.  The  most 
usual  were  branding,  mutilation,  the  wheel  and  the  stake,  and 
these  awful  penalties  were  usually  inflicted  by  ignorant  and 
superstitious  judges.  Civil  suits  dragged  on  for  an  indefinite 
period,  and  often  no  final  decision  was  arrived  at.  To  put  an 
end  to  this  state  of  things,  Maria  Theresa  resolved,  in  1753,  to 
make  one  uniform  legislation  for  the  whole  of  her  dominions. 
The  work  of  compilation  took  many  years.  The  commission 
appointed  by  the  sovereign  first  produced  eight  folio  volumes 
in  1767;  these  were  afterwards  abridged,  and  in  1776  the 
first  volume  of  the  new  compilation  appeared.  In  1768,  the 
"  Constitutio  criminalis  Theresiana  "  had  been  published.  It 
had  retained  the  barbarous  penalties  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
admitted  torture,  and  punished  blasphemy.  But  even  legal 
procedure  was  making  progress;  and,  in  1777,  torture  was 
finally  abolished,  and  trials  for  witchcraft,  if  not  entirely  sup- 
pressed, were  at  least  considerably  checked.  A  patent  of  the 
14th  of  May,  1749,  had  separated  the  administration  of  justice 
from  provincial  business,  and  a  minister  of  justice  had  been 
appointed  for  all  the  non-Hungarian  states.  Some  of  these 
praiseworthy  reforms  had,  it  is  true,  the  Utopian  character 
which  is  not  uncommon  in  the  eighteenth  century ;  as,  for 
example,  the  institution  of  the  so-called  commission  of  chastity, 
whose  office  it  was  to  prevent  all  unlawful  amours. 

Though  she  was  a  sincere  Catholic,  Maria  Theresa  never 
sacrificed  the  state  to  the  Church.  She  put  an  end  to  the 
ecclesiastical  penalties  which  the  priests  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  imposing;  forbade  the  various  religious  orders  to  send 
money  out  of  the  country,  the  papal  nuncios  to  travel  in  her 
dominions,  and  the  bishops  to  correspond  directly  with  the 
court  of  Rome.  She  also  prohibited  priests  from  having 
anything  to  do  with  the  making  of  wills.  In  1773,  the  order 
of  Jesuits  was  suppressed  in  Austria,  as  it  was  throughout  the 
rest  of  Europe. 


EDUCATION.  377 

Down  to  1740,  public  instruction  had  either  been  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  the  clergy  or  under  their  control.  There  were 
hardly  any  elementary  schools,  and  the  teaching  in  the  higher 
schools  was  extremely  poor.  Austrian  education  was  in  a  state 
of  miserable  inferiority  compared  with  either  France  or  Northern 
(Germany.  It  was  a  foreigner  who  was  entrusted  with  its 
improvement— Gerhard  van  Swieten,  a  Dutch  professor  of 
medicine  at  Vienna — who  was  physician  to  Maria  Theresa, 
and  also  the  illiberal  president  of  the  commission  for  the 
censorship  of  the  press.  All  schools  were  placed  under  state 
control.  A  law  passed  on  the  7th  of  February,  1749,  reserved 
the  sole  right  of  choosing  the  professors  of  the  university  of 
Vienna  to  the  government,  and,  soon  after,  the  schools 
belonging  to  the  Jesuits  and  Piarists  were  placed  under  the 
state.  An  imperial  resolution  of  the  24th  of  September,  1770, 
contains  the  words,  "Das  Schuhvesen  ist  und bleibt  allzeit  ein 
Politicum  "  {"  The  organization  of  schools  is  and  must  always 
remain  an  affair  of  state ") ;  and  this  principle,  pushed  to  an 
extreme,  bore  singular  consequences.  The  universities  were 
not  open  to  every  one,  and  no  one  could  go  to  study  in 
foreign  lands  without  the  permission  of  the  government.  Even 
theological  works  had  to  be  submitted  to  government  censure, 
which  was  extremely  strict,  and  often  as  intolerant  as  the 
ecclesiastical  censure.  It  prohibited  even  such  classical  works 
as  those  of  Machiavelli.  A  great  number  of  schools  for  the 
young  nobility  were  founded  during  the  reign  of  Maria  Theresa, 
among  them  the  Theresianum,  which  exists  at  the  present 
time.  In  1766,  the  commission  of  instruction  and  of  the 
censorship  of  the  press  was  founded.  The  suppression  of  the 
Jesuits  influenced  the  future  of  education  greatly;  but  at 
first  the  majority  of  the  professors  had  to  be  chosen  from 
ex-Jesuits,  as  the  number  of  other  teachers  was  not  sufficient. 
A  new  education  code  was  published  in  1775,  ^-'^^  this  was 
in  force  down  to  1850. 

But  the  best  act  of  Maria  Theresa  was  the  foundation  of 
elementary  schools.    Before  1770,  primary  education,  properly 


378  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGAR  Y. 

SO  called,  did  not  exist  Down  to  this  date,  all  schools 
had  been  entirely  dependent  on  the  Church ;  the  state  had 
had  nothing  to  do  with  them.  A  few  had  been  founded 
by  the  Piarists ;  but  those  which  had  once  flourished — as,  for 
example,  some  in  Bohemia — had  been  swept  away  by  the 
Jesuit  reaction.  In  May,  1770,  the  first  normal  school  was 
opened  at  Vienna,  and  a  royal  edict  of  September  in  the  same 
year  freed  schoolmasters  from  the  control  of  the  priests.  The 
suppression  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  sequestration  of  their 
property  had  placed  ample  funds  at  the  disposal  of  govern- 
ment, and  enabled  it  to  convert  many  classical  into  elementary 
schools,  and  in  1774  the  Silesian  schoolmaster,  the  celebrated 
Felbinger,  was  summoned  to  Vienna  to  introduce  good 
methods  of  teaching. 

At  the  same  time  higher  education,  especially  in  the 
university  of  Vienna,  developed  rapidly.  The  faculties  of 
medicine  and  law  took  rank  among  the  first  in  Europe. 
Besides  Van  Swieten,  who  was  the  worthy  disciple  of 
Boerhaave,  we  may  mention  the  botanist  Jacquin,  the  publicist 
Sonnenfels,  and  the  archaeologist  Eckhel,  the  real  creator 
of  numismatics,  as  among  those  whose  names  are  worthy  of 
remembrance.  In  literature,  properly  so  called,  there  is  not, 
however,  a  single  name  to  quote.  Poetry  made  but  halting 
progress,  and  in  her  clumsy  attempts  showed  but  i^\^  signs  of 
the  noble  influence  of  Klopstock  or  Lessing.  Architecture 
was  rococo  in  style,  and  sculpture  was  represented  in  Vienna  by 
Canova,  the  Italian.  Music  was  the  only  great  art  in  which 
Austria  excelled,  and  under  Gliick,  Haydn,  and  Mozart,  it 
reached  heights  hitherto  unknown.  In  their  immortal  works 
we  may  trace  the  influence  of  the  races  among  whom  they 
were  composed ;  they  combine  the  melodious  brightness  of 
Italian  music,  the  depth  of  harmony  of  the  German,  and  the 
melancholy  of  the  Slav.  Of  all  the  manifestations  of  the  mind 
of  man,  music  is  perhaps  the  only  one  which  can  develop  in 
a  state  of  intellectual  servitude. 


PROGRESS   OF   TRADE.  379 

Finance — Trade — The  Army. 

Francis  I.,  the  husband  of  Maria  Theresa,  busied  himself 
chiefly  with  the  finances,  and  was  assisted  in  the  work  by 
Chotek,  a  Chekh  noble,  who  had  succeeded  Haugwitz  as 
chancellor  of  Bohemia  and  Austria  in  1761.  He  was  well 
acquainted  with  economic  questions,  and  his  first  care  was  to 
reduce  the  expenses  of  the  court.  On  the  accession  of  Maria 
Theresa  the  finances  were  in  a  miserable  condition  ;  we  are 
assured  that  not  more  than  eighty-seven  thousand  thalers 
remained  of  her  father's  treasure.  Chotek  proceeded  to  levy 
a  tax  on  property  and  another  on  persons,  to  which  every  one 
contributed,  from  the  prince,  who  paid  six  hundred  florins, 
down  to  the  maid-servant,  who  paid  four  kreutzers,  exemption 
from  taxation  being  completely  abolished.  Count  Chotek 
was  the  first  to  show  what  use  could  be  made  of  Trieste  in 
order  to  compete  with  the  commerce  of  Venice.  That  town 
grew  rapidly ;  Dutch,  Neapolitan,  and  Greek  merchants  settled 
there  for  trading  purposes,  and  entered  into  relations  with 
both  hemispheres.  By  1763,  Austria  had  twelve  large  ships 
trading  with  India,  one  of  which  took  possession  of  the 
Nicobar  Islands  in  1776. 

By  this  date,  the  port  of  Trieste  was  habitually  frequented 
by  six  thousand  vessels.  Twenty-five  consulates  were  estab- 
lished in  the  Mediterranean  and  Atlantic ;  seven  in  Italy, 
thirteen  in  Turkey  in  Europe  and  Turkey  in  Asia,  one  at 
Ragusa,  one  at  Alexandria,  one  at  Tripoli,  and  one  at  Lisbon. 
The  Oriental  Academy,  which  was  founded  at  Vienna  in  1754, 
furnished  capable  and  well-educated  men  as  consuls.  The 
Hofcotnmerzialrath  (Board  of  Trade)  was  established  in  1766, 
and  did  much  to  develop  commerce,  the  cloth  of  Moravia 
being  especially  and  widely  in  demand. 

Roads  and  canals  were  improved,  while  the  customs  dues 
established  in  the  interior  were  either  abolished  or  reduced. 
The  postal  arrangements  were  also  greatly  improved.  Chotek 
created  a  reserve  fund  for  unforeseen  accidents,  and  raised  the 


38o  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

credit  of  Austria  by  his  punctuality  in  meeting  the  charges  of 
the  public  debt.  During  the  reign  of  Charles  VI.  the  state 
revenue  had  scarcely  reached  the  sum  of  thirty  millions  of 
florins  ;  by  1773  it  had  almost  reached  fifty-six  millions,  and 
by  the  time  of  Maria  Theresa's  death  it  exceeded  eighty 
millions.  A  patent,  bearing  date  1 751,  reorganized  the  lottery, 
which  by  the  end  of  this  reign  was  bringing  in  to  the  treasury 
no  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  florins. 

The  system  of  centralization  was  applied  to  the  depart- 
ment of  war  as  early  as  to  that  of  foreign  affairs.  Each  state, 
however,  retained  the  right  of  voting  its  contingent  for  the  army. 
The  total  number  of  troops  rose  to  one  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  men,  without  counting  the  irregulars  furnished  by 
Hungary.  Military  schools  were  opened,  and  Maria  Theresa 
anxiously  watched  over  the  welfare  of  her  soldiers.  During 
the  war  of  the  Austrian  succession,  a  medal  was  struck  in  her 
honour,  which  bore  the  well-deserved  superscription,  "  Mater 
castroriun."  After  the  battle  of  Kolin,  she  founded  the  military 
order  of  Maria  Theresa.  Some  reforms  were  borrowed  from 
the  Prussian  army,  as,  for  instance,  marching  in  time ;  and  the 
corps  of  sappers  and  miners  was  introduced.  The  artillery 
was  commanded  by  prince  Lichtenstein,  and  was  considered 
the  best  in  Europe.  In  1772,  conscription  was  introduced 
into  Bohemia,  Austria,  Moravia,  Carniola,  Carinthia,  and 
Galicia  ;  the  Tyrol  and  Hungary  were  exempted.  We  have 
already  spoken  of  the  military  frontiers.  During  the  Seven 
Years'  War  there  were  no  less  than  two  hundred  thousand  men 
under  arms.  "A woman,"  said  Frederick  II.,  "  has  carried  out 
measures  that  are  worthy  of  a  man."  At  this  period,  the 
Austrian  navy  was  composed  of  nine  ships  of  war  carrying  one 
hundred  and  ten  guns,  and  six  galleys  of  thirty-six  guns  each. 

"  On  the  accession  of  Maria  Theresa,"  writes  Sonnenfels, 
"  the  monarchy  had  neither  external  influence  nor  internal 
vigour ;  for  ability  there  was  no  emulation  and  no  encourage- 
ment ;  the  state  of  agriculture  was  miserable,  trade  small,  the 
finances  badly  managed,  and  credit  bad.    At  her  death,  she  left 


CONDITION  OF   THE   EMPIRE.  38 1 

to  her  successor  a  kingdom  improved  by  her  many  reforms,  and 
placed  in  that  rank  which  its  size  and  fertiUty  and  the  intelH- 
gence  of  its  inhabitants  ought  always  to  enable  it  to  maintain." 
Maria  Theresa  had  certainly  greater  claims  to  the  title  of 
"Great"  than  had  Catherine  of  Russia,  and  yet  it  has  never 
been  bestowed  upon  her. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

JOSEPH  II.   (l  780-1  790). 

Character  of  Joseph  II. 

Joseph  II.  was  forty  years  of  age  when  he  came  to  the  throne. 
He  had  been  emperor  for  fifteen  years,  and  his  mother  had 
ah-eady  associated  him  with  herself,  to  some  extent,  in  the 
government  of  the  Austrian  states.  He  seems  to  have  taken 
Frederick  the  Great  as  his  model.  Greatly  influenced  by  the 
philosophical  ideas  of  his  time,  he  had  waited  with  some  degree 
of  impatience  for  the  moment  when  he  should  be  ably  to  carry 
his  ideas  into  practice  in  his  own  dominions.  During  the  life- 
time of  Maria  Theresa  it  was  necessary  to  conceal  his  aspira- 
tions, or  at  any  rate  to  give  expression  to  but  few  of  them, 
and  for  many  years  there  existed  an  open  hostility  between  the 
old  court  of  the  empress  and  the  young  court  of  the  emperor. 
Having  for  so  long  a  time  been  obliged  to  confine  himself  to 
the  domain  of  pure  theory,  the  new  sovereign  hardly  realized 
what  difficulties  stood  in  the  way  of  the  practical  application  of 
his  ideas.  A  few  weeks  before  his  accession,  the  prince  de 
Ligne  said  of  him,  "  He  will  be  a  man  of  feeble  desires  which 
he  will  never  be  able  to  satisfy  \  his  whole  reign  will  be  one 
constant  desire  to  sneeze."  It  has  been  well  remarked  that 
almost  every  one  of  the  changes  made  by  the  French  Con- 
stituent Assembly  were  first  tried  by  Joseph  11. ;  but  the  sharp 
remedies  of  the  French  Revolution  were  tried  on  a  homogeneous 
people  who  were  in  a  much  more  enlightened  state  than  were 


POLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II.  383 

the  subjects  of  Austria,  and  indeed  many  of  them  would 
probably  never  have  been  accepted  in  France  had  they  not 
been  enforced  by  the  terrorism  of  the  Convention  and  the 
despotic  rule  of  Napoleon.  Joseph  II.,  a  philosopher  king, 
looked  upon  men  as  so  much  inert  matter  to  be  moulded  at 
will,  on  which  a  sovereign  might  make  what  experiments  he 
pleased  as  in  anima  vili. 

Those  which  he  tried  during  his  reign  came  either  too  soon  or 
too  late  :  too  soon,  because  the  minds  of  men  were  not  yet  ripe 
for  that  liberty  of  thought  and  religious  tolerance  which  he 
wished  to  introduce  ;  too  late,  because  the  peoples  whom  he 
wished  to  civilize  by  Germanizing  them  were  already  aroused 
to  a  consciousness  of  their  national  individuality.  Joseph  II. 
had  been  restricted  by  his  mother  to  the  management  of 
military  matters,  and  he  now  expected  to  rule  the  monarchy  as 
if  it  were  a  regiment.  He  aimed  at  making  philosophy  "the 
law-maker  of  his  empire,"  and  the  works  of  the  encyclopaedists 
and  of  the  French  economists,  especially  the  physiocrats,  were 
his  favourite  study.  During  his  visit  to  Paris,  he  had  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Necker,  Turgot,  Buffon,  Rousseau,  Marmontel, 
and  D'Alembert,  He  could  find  no  such  men  in  Austria  to 
help  him  to  carry  out  his  plans.  Those  whom  he  had — Von 
Kressel,  Von  Gebler,  Martin,  Gottfried  van  Swieten,  Sonnenfels 
the  converted  Jew,  Rautenstrauch,  etc. — were  most  of  them 
members  of  the  secret  societies  of  the  Freemasons  or  the 
lUuminati.  These  societies  had  been  obliged  to  conceal  their 
existence  under  Maria  Theresa.  In  Joseph's  reign,  they  were 
tolerated ;  and  we  find  quite  early  in  it  that  there  was  a  Lodge 
of  True  Concord  at  Vienna,  where  the  most  noted  free-thinkers 
of  the  capital  met,  a  Lodge  of  Crowned  Hope,  and  a  Joseph 
Lodge.  By  the  end  of  1785,  Freemasonry  was  officially 
recognized  in  Austria. 

Joseph  II.  had  a  very  simple  plan  of  action,  which  might 
be  reduced  to  this  formula — the  destruction  of  everything 
which  was  contrary  to  his  philosophical  opinions,  without  any 
reference  to  either  historical  or  religious  prejudices  or  opinions. 


384  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

His  most  ardent  wish  was  to  bring  about  a  complete  similarity 
in  language  and  culture  among  all  the  various  nations  whom 
fate  had  placed  under  his  rule.  He  wrote  to  an  Hungarian 
noble  who  had  protested  against  the  introduction  of  the 
German  language  into  his  country,  "  Every  proposal  ought  to 
be  based  upon  the  irrefutable  arguments  of  reason.  ,  .  .  The 
German  language  is  the  universal  language  of  my  empire.  I 
am  emperor  of  Germany.  The  principalities  which  I  possess 
are  provinces  which  form  one  whole  with  the  state  of  which 
I  am  the  head.  If  the  kingdom  of  Hungary  had  been  the 
most  important  of  my  possessions,  I  should  not  have  hesitated 
to  make  all  the  other  countries  speak  Hungarian." 

There  were  two  obstacles  which  Joseph  H.  in  his  war  with 
the  past  found  quite  insurmountable,  and  which  led  to  his 
defeat  in  the  struggle ;  on  the  one  side  religious  tradition  and 
faith,  and  on  the  other  historical  tradition  and  the  sense  of 
nationality.  We  shall  soon  see  how  he  provoked  a  patriotic 
reaction  in  Bohemia  and  Hungary,  the  consequences  of  which 
have  not  yet  passed  away ;  while  even  in  his  efforts  against 
Ultramontanism  he  did  not  always  manage  to  have  right  on 
his  side. 

Church  Reforms. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  reign  Joseph  declared 
war  on  the  Holy  See  and  the  religious  orders.  "We  must 
lessen  the  influence  of  the  Ulemas,"  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to 
Cardinal  Herzan,  his  minister  in  Rome.  "  I  despise  super- 
stitions and  Sadducees,  and  I  must  free  my  people  from  them. 
The  principles  of  monasticism  and  human  reason  are  in  flat 
contradiction  to  each  other."  Again,  he  wrote  to  the  arch- 
bishop of  Salzburg,,  "  Monks  are  the  most  dangerous  and  most 
useless  subjects  that  a  country  can  possess."  The  following 
are  the  principal  measures  which  resulted  from  these  opinions. 
The  right  of  granting  marriage  dispensations,  which  had  hitherto 
been  reserved  for  the  Holy  See,  was  now  transferred  to  the 
Austrian  bishops;  religious  orders  were  no  longer  allowed  to 


CHURCH  REFORMS.  385 

recognize  as  their  head  any  person  residing  in  a  foreign  land  ; 
no  papal  bull  was  to  be  published  before  it  had  received  the 
imperial  sanction;  the  two  bulls,  In  Csena  Domini  and  Uni- 
genitus,  which  defined  the  prerogatives  of  the  pope,  were  no 
longer  to  be  taught ;  no  titles  conferred  by  the  Roman  chancery 
were  to  be  used ;  no  one  was  to  go  to  Rome  to  study  at  the 
Collegium  Germanicum ;  and  no  money  was  to  be  sent  to 
Rome. 

All  these  measures  were  enacted  in  1781.  The  following 
year  Joseph  II.  attacked  the  convents.  As  a  philosopher,  he 
wished  to  destroy  these  dens  of  superstition,  and  as  an  econo- 
mist he  would  not  tolerate  idlers  who  consumed  without 
producing.  By  a  single  blow  he  suppressed  more  than  six  hun- 
dred convents  belonging  to  those  orders  which  made  religious 
contemplation  their  sole  object,  and  decreed  that  their  property 
should  be  applied  to  charitable  works.  He  caused  their  pos- 
sessions to  be  sold  at  a  low  price,  not  excepting  even  works  of 
art  or  sacred  utensils.  The  number  of  monks,  which  had  been 
sixty-three  thousand,  was  reduced  to  twenty  thousand,  and 
they  were  strictly  forbidden  to  maintain  any  connection  with 
foreign  countries.  The  king  interfered  even  with  the  details  of 
public  w^orship,  forbidding  the  placing  of  ex  voto  offerings  in 
the  churches,  the  reading  of  more  masses  than  one  in  a  church 
at  the  same  time,  the  setting  apart  of  altars  with  special 
privileges  in  the  matter  of  indulgences,  or  the  organization 
of  pilgrimages.  He  also  forbade  the  use  of  metal  candlesticks 
and  wooden  coffins ;  the  dead  were  to  be  buried  in  a  sheet 
only.  These  two  prohibitions  were  based  on  an  idea  of 
economy ;  he  maintained  that  it  was  useless  to  waste  so  much 
silver,  copper,  and  wood. 

In  1 781,  an  edict  of  toleration  was  also  published,  which 
granted  \\\& private  -w&q.  of  their  religion  to  Lutherans,  Calvinists, 
and  non-uniate  Greeks.  They  were  allowed  to  have  schools 
and  churches,  but  the  buildings  were  to  have  neither  towers  nor 
bells,  and  their  doors  were  not  to  open  on  the  public  road.  These 
prohibitions  did  not,  however,  extend  to  Hungary  or  Transyl- 

2  c 


386  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

vania,  where  liberty  of  conscience  had  always  been  more  or 
less  enjoyed.  Members  of  the  various  sects  were  granted  a 
legal  right  to  acquire  property,  and  were  to  be  admitted  to 
public  offices.  The  condition  of  the  Jews  was  also  improved, 
and  they  were  allowed  to  study  at  the  universities  and  to 
practise  medicine.  For  more  than  a  century  and  a  half  tolera- 
tion had  been  completely  unknown  in  Austria,  and  when  it 
was  proclaimed,  Hussites,  Utraquists,  and  Bohemian  Brothers 
suddenly  reappeared  in  Bohemia.  But  Joseph  11,  had  a 
fashion  of  his  own  of  understanding  what  was  meant  by  re- 
ligious tolerance,  and  kept  it  within  official  boundaries  drawn 
by  himself,  beyond  which  no  one  was  allowed  to  step.  When 
a  sect  of  Deists  was  formed  in  Bohemia,  he  issued  a  proclama- 
tion, one  of  the  articles  of  which  ran  thus  :  "  If  a  man  or 
woman  comes  to  be  entered  in  the  lists  at  the  chancery  of 
the  circle  as  a  Deist,  he  must  immediately  receive  four  and 
twenty  blows  from  a  stick,  not  because  he  is  a  Deist,  but 
because  he  pretends  to  be  something  concerning  which  he 
knows  not  what  it  is  {weil  er  vorgibt  etwas  zu  seyn,  vo?i  dem  er 
nicht  weiss  was  es  ist)." 

Incomplete  and  absurd  as  some  of  these  measures  were, 
they  none  the  less  struck  a  terrible  blow  at  Catholicism.  The 
archbishops  of  Vienna  and  Pesth  and  the  clergy  generally  pro- 
tested against  them  with  all  their  energy,  and  the  following 
epigram  was  circulated  in  the  capital  : — 

"  Tollendos  tolerans,  tolerandos  Austria  tollis  ; 
Sic  tollens,  tolerans,  intoleranda  facis." 

Pope  Pius  VI.  took  a  step  hitherto  unheard  of  in  ecclesiastical 
annals  in  the  hope  of  averting  the  dangers  which  threatened 
the  Austrian  Church.  He  journeyed  to  Vienna  to  see  what  his 
personal  influence  could  do  with  the  son  of  Maria  Theresa. 
On  his  arrival  he  was  lodged  in  the  imperial  castle  and  treated 
less  as  a  guest  than  as  a  prisoner,  not  even  being  allowed  to 
communicate  with  the  Austrian  bishops,  and  though  he  was 
received  with  the  most  enthusiastic  veneration  by  the  Viennese 
people,  he  failed  altogether  to  move  the  scepticism  of  the  prince 


yOSEPHINlSM.  387 

and  his  advisers.  His  visit  even  gave  rise  to  a  number  of 
violent  pamphlets  which  must  have  scandalized  the  ghosts 
of  Ferdinand  II.  and  Maria  Theresa. 

After  the  departure  of  the  pope,  Joseph  continued  his 
campaign  against  ecclesiastical  institutions  with  fresh  energy. 
He  suppressed  all  the  mendicant  orders,  even  the  Trinitarians, 
whose  mission  it  was  to  ransom  captives  from  barbarous 
nations.  He  would  not,  he  said,  have  money  going  out  of  the 
country,  and  he  had  sufficiently  provided  for  the  interests  of 
his  subjects  by  means  of  treaties  and  the  establishment  of 
consulates.  The  marriage  law  passed  in  January,  1783,  was  a 
still  more  severe  blow  at  the  authority  of  the  Church,  as  it 
made  marriage  only  a  civil  contract  and  allowed  divorce. 
The  emperor  also  deprived  all  foreign  bishops  of  their  estates 
in  Austria  and  annexed  them  to  his  own  domains,  at  the 
same  time  that  he  caused  the  Austrian  bishops  to  surrender 
any  possessions  which  involved  obedience  to  foreign  powers. 
On  the  other  hand  he  increased  the  number  of  village  priests 
and  elementary  schools.  The  incessant  complaints  of  the 
Holy  See  obliged  Joseph  in  his  turn  to  visit  Rome,  and 
this  meeting  with  the  sovereign  pontiff  brought  about  some 
slight  improvement  in  the  action  of  the  emperor  towards  the 
Catholic  Church,  but  it  was  always  harsh  and  often  clumsy. 
Josephinism,  as  it  has  since  been  named,  preceded  by  about 
a  century  the  Kulturkampf  of  modern  Germany.  The  univer- 
sities were  as  harshly  treated  as  the  Church  on  which  they 
had  so  long  depended,  being  deprived  of  their  property  and 
becoming  state  establishments.  Joseph  II.  was  essentially  utili- 
tarian in  his  views,  and  felt  no  interest  in  any  but  elementary  edu- 
cation, and  Van  Swieten,  when  one  of  his  ministers,  prevented 
him  even  from  founding  an  Academy.  But  he  was  more  active 
in  furthering  projects  of  philanthropy,  and  Austria  owes  to  him 
the  establishment  of  hospitals  and  the  foundation  of  a  school 
of  medicine  and  surgery.  A  (ierman  university  was  founded 
at  Lemberg  in  1783,  but  this  had  for  its  object  the  Germanizing 
of  Galicia.     Everything  which  could  recall  a  past  hateful  to 


388  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  emperor  was  treated  by  him  with  merciless  brutality.  Thus 
the  palace  of  Hradcany  in  Prague  was  turned  into  a  cavalry 
barracks,  and  the  treasures  of  art  which  adorned  it  were 
abandoned  to  downright  pillage.  In  a  list  drawn  up  at  the 
time  by  one  of  the  imperial  agents,  Titian's  Leda  is  described 
thus  :  '*  Item,  A  naked  woman  bitten  by  a  wild  goose."  Most 
of  the  legal  measures  of  this  time  recall  the  extravagances  of 
the  period  of  the  Reformation  or  anticipate  those  of  the  French 
Revolution. 

Administrative,  Judicial,  and  Economical  Reforms. 

Joseph  II.  was  the  enemy  of  all  feudal  rights  and  an 
enthusiastic  philanthropist ;  he  abolished  serfdom  in  Bohemia, 
Moravia,  Galicia,  and  Hungary,  and  granted  full  ownership  of 
the  lands  they  cultivated  to  the  emancipated  serfs.  The  powers 
of  the  Kreisdmter  (government  officials  in  the  circles)  were 
increased,  and  completely  destroyed  all  those  which  the  feudal 
lords  had  hitherto  been  able  to  exercise.  Nothing  was  neglected 
which  could  help  to  reduce  Bohemia  and  Hungary  to  the  rank 
of  simple  provinces ;  the  emperor  meant  to  Germanize  them 
at  any  cost,  and  then  to  rule  them  as  a  liberal  tyrant.  If  this 
system  had  succeeded,  when  the  whole  of  Austria  had  become 
German,  she  would  gradually  in  her  turn  have  assimilated  the 
whole  of  Germany,  and  would  form  now,  in  union  with  her, 
a  nation  of  nearly  twenty-four  millions  of  inhabitants.  The 
possessions  of  Austria  were  divided  by  Joseph  into  thirteen 
governments,  and  subdivided  into  circles,  at  the  head  of  each 
of  which  was  a  captain  {Kreishauptinann).  These  govern- 
ments were — ist,  Galicia;  2nd,  Bohemia;  3rd,  Moravia  and 
Silesia ;  4th,  Lower  Austria ;  5th,  Inner  Austria  (Styria, 
Carinthia,  and  Carniola) ;  6th,  the  Tyrol ;  7th,  Outer  Austria 
(possessions  in  South-Western  Germany);  8th,  Transylvania; 
9th,  Hungary;  loth,  Croatia;  nth,  Lombardy;  12th,  Gorica, 
Gradisca,  and  Trieste;  13th,  the  Low  Countries. 

Diets  were  no  longer  convoked,  and  the  privileges  of  the 
royal  towns  were  entirely  abolished ;   the  old  titles  of  Schul- 


ECONOMICAL  REFORMS.  389 

theiss,  senator,  consul,  etc. — were  suppressed.  Each  town  had 
a  burgomaster,  assisted  by  two  or  three  councillors,  who  were 
all  really  government  officials.  Joseph  II.,  imbued  with  the 
theories  of  the  physiocrats,  was  determined  to  arrange  the 
taxation  of  his  dominions  according  to  their  notions  ;  his  ideal 
Avas  to  be  able  some  day  to  obtain  an  average  of  forty  per 
cent,  on  all  incomes  for  the  use  of  the  state,  but  meantime  he 
contented  himself  with  establishing  a  tax  levied  on  the  incomes 
derived  from  land  on  the  average  of  the  last  ten  years.  It 
was  decreed  that  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  net  produce  of  the 
land  should  be  set  aside  for  the  state,  and  neither  nobles  nor 
priests  were  to  be  exempted  from  payment.  Two  commissions 
of  taxation  were  created,,  one  for  Hungary  and  another  for  the 
rest  of  the  kingdom,  and  a  government  survey  was  taken  at 
great  expense;  but  this  vast  undertaking  was  unfortunately 
accompanied  by  many  vexatious  arrangements,  and  was  usually 
entrusted  to  ignorant  officials.  It  lasted  for  more  than  five 
years. 

Joseph's  efforts  to  enrich  his  people  by  means  of  com 
merce  were  especially  directed  to  the  Low  Countries,  which 
possessed  the  best  ports  for  merchant  vessels,  and  he  attempted 
to  obtain  the  free  navigation  of  the  Scheldt,  which  had  been 
closed  by  the  Dutch  since  the  Barrier  Treaty  (1714).  Owing, 
however,  to  the  combined  resistance  of  Holland  and  France, 
he  failed  in  this ;  but  he  succeeded  better  on  the  Danube, 
and  thanks  to  his  exertions  the  natural  wealth  of  Hungary  in 
corn,  wine,  and  flocks  was  able  to  be  sold  to  greater  advantage 
than  formerly.  A  road,  called  after  him  the  Via  Joscphina,  was 
made  in  his  reign  to  unite  the  town  of  Karlovac  (Karlstadt) 
and  the  ports  of  Senj  (Zeng),  and  Carlopago  (Bag);  and  the 
ports  on  the  Adriatic,  especially  Fiume,  were  improved.  The 
friendly  terms  on  which  he  was  with  the  Porte  enabled  the 
emperor  to  obtain  freedom  from  the  attacks  of  the  corsairs 
of  Barbary  for  Austrian  ships,  and  a  treaty  of  friendship  and 
reciprocal  trade  was  concluded  with  the  emperor  of  Morocco, 
and  another  with   Turkey  and  Russia.     Joseph  was  aided  in 


3^0  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO'HUNGARY. 

all  these  undertakings  by  count  Charles  of  Zinzendorf,  the 
director  of  commerce,  who  had  been  governor  of  Trieste. 
Trade  with  the  Levant  acquired  a  degree  of  prosperity  hitherto 
unknown,  and  factories  were  established  even  in  China  and 
the  Indies.  The  Nicobar  Islands  were  granted  to  Joseph  by 
Hyder  Ali,  but  the  unhealthiness  of  the  climate  forced  him 
to  abandon  them.  At  home  a  large  number  of  manufac- 
tories were  built,  and  it  could  no  longer  be  said  that  the 
Viennese  did  not  even  know  how  to  weave  a  pair  of  silk 
stockings.  The  emperor  was  a  great  protectionist,  and 
wished  above  all  things  to  secure  the  development  of  home 
iuduslries  and  to  restrain  importation.  As  he  said,  he  was 
desirous  that  the  merchants  in  his  dominions  should  no 
longer  be  merely  "  the  agents  of  the  English,  French,  and 
Dutch."  His  law  concerning  the  customs,  which  bears  date 
the  27th  of  August,  1784,  introduces  a  thorough-going  pro- 
tective-system. The  importation  of  foreign  produce  is  en- 
tirely prohibited ;  private  persons  even  may  only  send  for 
articles  of  food  on  payment  of  heavy  duties  amounting  in 
some  cases  to  sixty  per  cent.  Even  the  importation  of  salt 
fish  is  forbidden  !  In  order  to  set  an  example  to  his  subjects, 
the  emperor  caused  all  the  foreign  wines  which  were  in  his 
cellars  to  be  distributed  among  the  hospitals.  The  first  effect 
of  this  system  was  the  creation  of  smugglers  and  informers, 
and  the  harsh  way  in  which  it  was  carried  out  by  Joseph  can 
only  be  compared  to  the  severity  with  which  Napoleon  tried 
to  maintain  the  continental  blockade  against  England.  He 
certainly  succeeded  in  making  his  subjects  build  factories,  but 
they  were  for  the  most  part  established  by  foreigners,  Swiss. 
French,  and  English,  who  must  have  carried  off  a  good  share 
of  the  millions  which  the  emperor  wanted  to  keep  by  force  in 
his  dominions. 

The  legislative  work  which  had  been  begun  by  Maria 
Theresa  was  continued  by  Joseph  II.  He  published  a  civil 
code  which  formed  the  basis  of  that  of  Francis  11. ,  the  code 
still  in  use  in  the  Austrian  dominions.     His  penal  code  bears 


FOREIGN  POLICY.  39 1 

traces  of  the  philosophic  ideas  of  the  sovereign.  He  abolished 
the  cruel  punishments  for  blasphemy  and  sorcery  which  had 
been  retained  by  Maria  Theresa.  The  criminal  courts  were 
reorganized,  and  placed  under  six  courts  of  appeal — those  of 
Vienna,  Prague,  Klagenfurt,  Friburg  in  Briesgau,  Briinn,  and 
Lemberg  (Lwow).  Hungary  was  not  included.  Besides  these, 
there  was  also  a  supreme  court,  divided  into  three  senates — 
one  for  the  German  provinces,  another  for  those  belonging  to 
the  crown  of  Bohemia,  and  a  third  for  Galicia.  The  crime  of 
rebellion  was  alone  to  be  punished  by  death,  and  torture  was 
abolished.  But  this  code,  which  was  in  some  respects  so 
humane,  still  allowed  imprisonment  in  irons  for  thirty  years, 
the  criminal  being  chained  to  the  wall  of  his  prison,  and 
includes  other  penalties,  which  are  in  some  cases  absurd,  and 
in  others  Draconian  in  their  severity.  We  may  mention  two 
of  the  punishments  invented  by  Joseph  H.  Criminals  were 
condemned  to  be  chained  in  pairs,  whatever  their  rank,  and 
forced  to  sweep  the  streets  of  Vienna,  or  drag  the  boats  which 
came  up  the  Danube. 

Foreign  Policy — TJie  Fiirstenbund  (1785) — Revolt  of  the 
Nethe7'lands — War  zvith  Turkey  (1788). 

In  his  foreign  policy,  Joseph  H.  remained  true  to  that  system 
of  which  Frederick  the  Great  had  set  the  fashion.  He  used 
his  utmost  endeavours  to  make  his  kingdom  more  compact. 
Although  he  was  strongly  interested  in  his  possessions  in  the 
Low  Countries,  he  was  well  aware  that  they  were  a  source  of 
difficulty  to  the  house  of  Austria  rather  than  an  element  of 
strength,  and  in  1785  he  attempted  to  make  an  exchange  with 
Bavaria.  He  proposed  to  Charles  Theodore,  the  elector  of 
Bavaria, — the  prince  whom  a  few  years  earlier  he  had  tried  to 
deprive  of  all  his  possessions  without  any  compensation — that 
they  should  make  the  following  arrangement  : — The  elector 
should  give  up  Bavaria,  the  Upper  Palatinate,  Neuburg, 
Sulzbach,  and  Leuchtenberg  to  Austria,  and  should  receive 
in  exchange  three  millions  of  money  and  the  whole  of  the 


392  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Austrian  Netherlands  except  Luxemburg  and  Namur,  which 
towns  were  to  be  given  to  France  in  order  to  secure  her 
agreement.  Austria  would  thus  have  become  a  homogeneous 
state,  and,  absolute  mistress  of  Southern  Germany,  would 
have  been  able  more  easily  to  hold  in  check  the  greed  of 
Prussia.  Frederick  defeated  all  these  plans.  Under  pretence 
of  maintaining  the  constitution  of  Germany,  he  brought  about 
an  alliance  of  the  chief  German  princes,  which  was  called 
the  Fiirstenbund  (23rd  July,  1785)  and  thus  secured  the 
future  of  Prussia.  Soon  after  troubles  broke  out  in  Belgium. 
Tired  of  the  despotic  rule  of  the  emperor,  which  attacked  both 
the  liberties  of  the  nation  and  those  religious  institutions 
which  were  so  dear  to  the  Catholic  population,  the  country 
rose  and  proclaimed  its  independence  (1789).  This  Belgian 
insurrection  was  not  suppressed  until  after  the  death  of 
Joseph  II. 

In  his  behaviour  towards  the  Turks,  the  emperor  followed 
tlie  example  of  Leopold  I.  and  Charles  VI.  His  intimate 
alliance  with  Catherine  II.,  the  esteem  which  he  professed  for 
that  princess,  and  his  own  philanthropic  ideas,  all  led  to  this 
policy.  In  an  interview  with  Catherine,  at  Kherson  (1786),  he 
and  the  empress  had  formed  a  plan  for  the  complete  expulsion 
of  the  Ottomans,  and  the  division  of  their  territory  between 
France,  England,  Austria,  Spain,  and  Russia.  When  war 
broke  out  between  Turkey  and  Russia,  Joseph  II.  at  once 
took  part  in  it.  He  marched  against  the  Turks  "  in  order  to 
recover  those  lands  which  unfortunate  circumstances  had 
separated  from  his  empire."  The  truth  was  he  was  deter- 
mined not  to  allow  the  Russians  to  be  the  sole  heirs  of 
Turkey.  In  a  letter  to  the  king  of  Prussia,  he  announces 
his  intention  of  Germanizing  his  conquests.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  the  nations  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula  began  to  bestir 
themselves  and  to  dream  of  their  old  independence  ;  there 
were  premonitory  signs  of  the  Servian  revolution,  and  the 
first  national  poet,  Dositei  Obradovic,  greeted  the  Austrian 
army  enthusiastically.     His  poem  of  "Servia  Delivered"  has 


DEATH  OF  JOSEPH  II.  393 

a  frontispiece  representing  Joseph  II.  breaking  the  chains  of 
the  southern  Slavs. 

"  Noble  sovereign,  Joseph  the  Great ! "  cries  the  poet, 
"  extend  thy  protection  over  the  Servian  race.  Turn  thy 
beneficent  face  towards  a  people  who  were  dear  to  thy 
ancestors,  to  miserable  Servia  and  Bosnia,  who  suffer  trials 
without  number.  Glory  of  the  world,  illustrious  monarch  1 
restore  to  Bulgaria  her  boyars,  to  Servia  her  heroes  of  old 
time,  and  to  Greece  her  Pindars  !  "  But  the  hour  of  regeneration 
liad  not  yet  struck  for  the  Danubian  Christians,  nor  was  the 
Austria  of  Joseph  II.  fit  to  be  the  instrument  of  it,  for  she 
would  have  given  to  them  the  doubtful  benefits  of  Germaniza- 
tion.  Joseph  made  large  preparations  for  war ;  two  hundred 
and  forty-five  thousand  infantry  and  thirty-six  thousand  cavalry 
were  set  on  foot,  but  they  were  scattered  over  the  country  from 
the  Dniester  to  the  Adriatic.  At  first  he  led  the  troops  himself ; 
but  he  lost  forty-five  thousand  men  from  sickness  and  the 
attacks  of  the  Turks,  and,  sick  himself,  he  threw  up  the  command 
and  returned  to  Vienna  in  December,  1788.  Loudon  carried 
on  the  war  with  vigour,  captured  Belgrade  (29th  Septeimber, 
1789)  and  Shabats,  and  then  pushed  on  into  Bosnia. 

Joseph  II.  did  not  long  survive  these  triumphs.  His 
generous  but  ill-balanced  mind  had  suffered  much  both  from 
the  loss  of  the  Netherlands  and  from  the  concessions  he  had 
had  to  make  to  Hungary.  He  had  been  obliged  to  humiliate 
himself  to  Pius  VI.,  whom  he  had  formerly  defied,  in  order 
to  get  him  to  recall  the  Belgians  to  their  allegiance  by  his 
exhortations,  and  to  the  Hungarians  by  his  act  of  the  8th  of 
December,  1789,  which  restored  to  them  their  confiscated 
privileges.  He  died  on  the  20th  of  the  following  February. 
It  is  said  that  he  wished  to  have  these  words  inscribed  on 
his  tomb:  "Here  lies  a  prince  whose  intentions  were  pure, 
but  who  was  unsuccessful  in  all  his  enterprises."  He  was 
only  forty-nine  at  the  time  of  his  death. 

The  \wor^  /osephiiiis?n  has  remained  in  the  political  language 
of  Austria  to  express  those  ideas  which  he  endeavoured  to 


394  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-nUNGARY. 

carry  out,  but  which  failed  to  overcome  the  historical  and 
religious  prejudices  of  a  people  wedded  to  the  past.  His  name 
is  remembered  with  some  degree  of  popularity  on  account  of 
the  love  for  his  people  Avhich  was  manifest  in  many  of  his 
actions.  In  one  of  the  villages  of  Moravia  a  monument  is 
still  standing  on  the  spot  where  the  emperor  with  his  own 
august  hands  guided  the.  plough,  in  order  to  show  the  interest 
he  took  in  agriculture.  The  peasants  whom  he  freed  celebrate 
his  good  deeds  even  in  our  time,  and  for  many  a  long  year 
they  refused  to  believe  in  his  death. 

Hungary  and  Bohemia. 

The  reign  of  Joseph  11.  is  described  by  the  historians  of 
Hungary  and  Bohemia  as  a  disastrous  time  for  the  two  countries. 
Directly  he  ascended  the  throne  he  began  to  carry  out  a  series 
of  measures  which  deeply  irritated  the  Magyars.  With  his 
philosophical  ideas,  the  crown  of  Hungary  was  to  him  nothing 
more  than  a  Gothic  bauble,  and  the  privileges  of  the  nation 
only  the  miserable  remains  of  an  age  of  barbarism  ;  the  political 
opinions  of  the  Hungarians  were  as  distasteful  to  him  as  their 
customs,  and  he  amused  himself  with  ridiculing  the  long  beards 
and  the  soft  boots  of  the  great  nobles.  He  never  would  be 
crowned.  He  annoyed  the  bishops  by  his  laws  against 
convents,  while  his  tyrannical  tolerance  never  succeeded  in 
contenting  the  Protestants.  He  refused  to  unite  Galicia  to 
Hungary,  though  the  only  claim  which  Austria  had  put  forth  to 
that  province  had  been  th€  rights  of  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen, 
nor  would  he  appoint  a  palatine.  He  began  by  concentrating 
all  the  business  of  the  country  in  the  Hungarian  chancery  and 
the  Council  of  Lieutenancy  established  at  Buda.  On  the  7th 
of  April,  1784,  he  ordered  that  the  holy  crown  should  be 
brought  to  him  in  Vienna  and  placed  in  the  imperial  treasury. 
To  confiscate  this  symbol  of  Hungarian  independence  was,  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Magyars,  an  attempt  at  the  suppression  of  the 
nation  itself,  and  the  affront  was  deeply  resented.  Up  to  this 
time  the  official  language  of  the  kingdom  had  been  Latin,  a 


HUNGARIAN  FOLICY  OF  JOSEPH  II.  395 

neutral  tongue  among  the  many  languages  in  use  in  the  various 
parts  of  HungarJ^  Joseph  believed  he  was  proving  his  liberal 
principles  in  substituting  German,  and  that  language  took  the 
place  of  Latin.  From  May,  1784,  to  November,  1785,  the 
diets  could  not  protest  against  this  decree,  as  arbitrary  as  it 
was  impoUtic,  because  they  were  no  longer  convoked ;  but  the 
comitats  gave  utterance  to  bitter  complaints.  Joseph  II.  soon 
learned  that  it  is  not  wise  to  attack  the  dearest  prejudices  of 
a  nation.  The  edict  which  introduced  a  foreign  language  was 
the  signal  for  the  new  birth  of  Magyar.  For  some  time  there 
had  been  an  Hungarian  literature.  Among  the  young  nobles 
who  formed  the  Hungarian  Guard  of  Maria  Theresa,  more 
than  one,  among  whom  the  poet  Bessenyi  may  be  especially 
mentioned,  had  cultivated  national  poetry  with  ardour,  forming 
themselves  on  French  models  and  adopting  French  ideas. 
Collections  of  Hungarian  compositions  had  been  begun,  and 
the  attacks  of  Joseph  IL,  while  rousing  the  spirit  of  patriotism, 
had  given  fresh  vigour  to  this  new  literature. 

Other  measures  helped  to  excite  the  nation.  The  king 
ordered  a  census  to  be  taken  which  was  to  form  the  basis  for 
recruiting  the  army.  This  census,  which  paid  no  attention  to 
rank  or  class,  and  entirely  disregarded  the  comitats,  caused 
great  irritation,  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  send  troops  to 
protect  the  agents  who  had  to  carry  out  the  work.  It  was  still 
worse  when  Joseph  proceeded  to  meddle  with  the  comitats 
themselves.  He  suppressed  their  assemblies  and  placed  an 
official  at  their  head  who  was  nominated  by  the  government. 
He  divided  the  land  into  ten  circles,  each  of  which  was  governed 
by  a  captain,  Kreis/iaiipt/!ia?in  :  the  name  of  Krcishatiptmaini  is 
still  hated  throughout  Hungary.  These  imprudent  measures 
were  to  some  extent  atoned  for  by  the  liberal  reforms  which 
accompanied  them,  as,  for  example,  the  suppression  of  the 
feudal  courts ;  but  the  Hungarians  were  too  much  irritated  to 
appreciate  the  changes  justly,  and  the  nobles  were  also  too  pre- 
judiced and  too  ignorant  to  share  those  ideas  of  the  sovereign 
which  took  land  and  not  the  peasant  as  the  basis  of  all  taxation. 


396  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Consequently  Joseph's  efforts  to  obtain  an  accurate  survey  of 
the  land  met  with  great  resistance.  At  the  time  of  the  Turkish 
campaign  the  comitats  refused  to  supply  the  king  with  men  or 
provisions,  and  that  campaign  was  not  sufficiently  brilliant  to 
enable  him  to  appeal  to  them  with  all  the  prestige  of  military 
glory.  The  convocation  of  the  diet  was  demanded  on  all 
sides.  Some  of  the  comitats  declared  the  king's  requests 
illegal ;  others  suppressed  the  royal  orders  ;  and  the  general 
discontent  was  so  great  that  several  of  them  put  themselves  in 
communication  with  the  king  of  Prussia.  Joseph,  ill  and  weary 
of  a  ten  years'  struggle,  was  obliged  to  yield.  By  a  royal  order 
of  the  2oth  of  January,  1790,  he  withdrew  all  his  reforms,  and 
restored  everything  to  the  state  in  which  it  was  in  1780,  except 
that  he  maintained  religious  toleration  and  all  the  measures 
passed  in  favour  of  the  peasants.  Some  time  afterwards  he 
was  forced  to  send  the  royal  crown  back  to  Pesth. 

In  Bohemia,  as  in  Hungary,  he  refused  to  be  crowned,  and 
he  insulted  the  Bohemians  in  their  most  cherished  national 
feelings  by  turning  the  palace  of  his  predecessors  into  a 
barrack.  Doubtless  the  toleration  which  he  granted  was  a 
benefit  to  the  country,  but  all  those  of  his  subjects  who  were 
not  willing  to  be  enrolled  among  the  official  sects  were  severely 
persecuted.  Deists  were  flogged  and  exiled  into  Hungary, 
and  their  children  were  torn  from  them  in  order  that  they 
might  be  educated  in  the  religion  of  the  state.  The  number 
of  those  who  declared  themselves  adherents  of  the  Augsburg 
confession  was  not  more  than  forty-five  thousand.  I'he 
emperor  forbade  the  higher  schools  to  receive  pupils  who  could 
not  understand  German,  and  substituted  German  for  Latin  in 
the  teaching  of  the  faculty  of  philosophy  in  the  university  of 
Prague.  The  authority  of  the  court  of  appeal  in  that  city  was 
limited  to  Bohemia,  and  was  no  longer  allowed  to  extend  to 
Moravia,  while  Prague  was  deprived  of  its  title  oi  Residenzstadt^ 
that  being  reserved  for  Vienna  alone.  The  powers  of  the  diet 
were  considerably  diminished,  and  the  emperor  forbade  the 
Estates  to  dispose  of  the  hoftie  funds  or  special  budget  without 


ATTACK  ON  BOHEMIAN  RIGHTS.  397 

the  approval  of  the  court  chamber  {Ifofkammer)  of  Vienno. 
In  1783,  he  suppressed  the  permanent  committee  of  the  diet 
and  transferred  its  authority  to  the  central  government.  In 
fact,  the  only  one  of  their  ancient  rights  which  the  Estates  were 
allowed  to  retain  was  the  right  to  vote  the  taxes,  but  the  manner 
in  which  they  were  to  be  raised  was  taken  out  of  their  control. 
At  last,  in  1788,  Joseph  announced  that  in  future  the  diet  was 
•only  to  deliberate  over  such  matters  as  might  be  presented  to 
it  by  the  sovereign,  and  that  it  would  only  be  convoked  when 
he  judged  right  that  it  should  meet.  The  Estates  protested, 
and  when  a  new  patent  concerning  the  taxes  was  published  in 
February,  1789,  count  Rudolph  Chotek,  the  high  chancellor  of 
Bohemia  and  Austria,  refused  to  sign  it,  and  sent  in  his 
resignation. 

After  so  many  attacks  on  its  independence  and  its 
nationality,  it  might  have  been  thought  that  Bohemia,  as  a 
separate  kingdom  and  nation,  was  entirely  destroyed,  and  that 
she  was  ready  to  become  a  German  province  of  the  Austrian 
empire.  But  the  moment  of  her  deepest  humiliation  was  the 
very  moment  of  her  regeneration.  The  revival  was  due  in 
some  measure  to  the  general  reaction  which  took  place  on  the 
death  of  Joseph  II.  Some  symptoms  of  this  may  be  detected 
from  the  moment  of  his  successor's  coronation.  "The 
tyranny  of  Joseph  II.,"  says  count  Caspar  Sternberg  in  his 
Memoirs,  "  had  roused  the  feeling  of  nationality  which  had  so 
long  slumbered.  The  emperor  wished  to  centralize  everything, 
and  also  to  destroy  the  Bohemian  language ;  but  no  people 
will  allow  the  palladium  of  its  existence  as  a  nation  to  be 
snatched  from  it.  At  the  coronation  of  Leopold,  all  those  who 
could  speak  Chekh  might  be  heard  using  that  language  in  the 
very  corridors  of  the  palace."  The  Chekhs  date  the  new  birth 
of  the  sentiment  of  nationality  from  the  reign  of  Joseph  II. 
Bohemia  owes  one  single  benefit  to  that  prince,  the  foundation 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Sciences,  which  continues  to  flourish 
in  our  time,  and  this  society,  from  the  beginning,  became  the 
centre  of  those  historical  researches  which  have  contributed  so 
largely  to  the  revival  of  Slavism  in  Bohemia. 


398  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Leopold  II.  (1790-1792). 

The  new  sovereign,  Leopold  II.,  had  been  serving  his 
apprenticeship  in  the  art  of  governing  ever  since  1765,  in  the 
duchy  of  Tuscany.  He  had  received  the  well-merited  praises 
of  both  economists  and  philosophers  for  the  wisdom  of  his 
administration,  which  was  not  only  paternal  but  also  intelli- 
gent. From  the  moment  of  his  accession  a  violent  reaction 
against  the  acts  of  his  predecessor  set  in,  and  Leopold  yielded 
to  it  gracefully.  He  began  by  declaring  that  he  considered 
the  provincial  diets  the  pillars  of  the  monarchy,  that  he  would 
restore  their  privileges,  and  that  he  would  labour  hard  with 
them  to  bring  the  interests  of  his  people  into  harmony  with 
those  of  the  sovereign.  He  withdrew  those  measures  of 
Joseph  II.  which  had  most  violently  offended  public  feeling, 
and  suspended  that  system  of  taxation  which  made  the  com- 
munes responsible  to  the  treasury  for  the  taxes  due  from  each 
inhabitant ;  allowed  foreign  produce  to  cross  the  frontiers  ; 
and  redressed  many  of  the  real  grievances  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary.  He  also  invited  the  bishops  to  send  in  their 
claims,  and  appointed  a  commission  to  examine  into  them. 
He  restored  to  the  clergy  most  of  their  important  rights, 
especially  those  of  regulating  the  liturgy  as  they  wished, 
holding  synods  with  the  permission  of  government,  and 
organizing  the  management  of  parishes  with  state  approval. 
At  the  same  time,  he  retained  those  laws  which  forbade  the 
publication  of  bulls  without  the  placetum  regium,  which 
deprived  the  bishops  of  their  rights  to  administer  diocesan 
funds,  and  which  placed  all  ecclesiastics  under  the  control  of 
the  ordinary  tribunals.  His  concessions,  however,  satisfied 
and  disarmed  the  clergy. 

Leopold  II.  was  less  fortunate  with  the  revolted  Belgians, 
whom  he  tried  in  vain  to  appease  by  the  most  liberal  promises. 
He  offered  them  a  full  amnesty ;  promised  no  longer  to  place 
foreigners  in  public  offices,  to  give  the  Estates  the  complete 
control  of  the  army,  and  to  pass  no  law  without  their  assent. 


LEOPOLD   II.  399 

All  this  was,  however,  useless,  and  he  was  obliged  to  have 
recourse  to  force.  An  army  of  thirty  thousand  men  met  in 
the  province  of  Luxemburg  and  entered  the  Netherlands. 
Namur  and  Brussels  were  taken,  and  Leopold  added  to  the 
honour  of  his  victories  by  his  clemency.  But  Belgium  was  only 
reconquered  by  Austria  in  order  to  become  the  battle-field  of 
the  Austrian  struggles  against  the  French  Revolution  (1790). 

Meantime  the  war  with  Turkey  went  on,  and  the  success 
of  Austria  began  to  make  England  and  Prussia  anxious.  The 
latter  had  concentrated  an  army  on  the  borders  of  Silesia,  and 
had  encouraged  the  malcontents  of  the  Low  Countries.  Not- 
withstanding this,  Leopold  entered  into  negociations  with 
Frederick  William,  when  the  latter  brought  forward  the  most 
extraordinary  proposals  on  the  part  of  Prussia.  He  demanded 
that  Austria  and  Russia  should  give  back  to  the  Porte  all  the 
lands  conquered  between  the  Danube  and  the  Dniester,  and 
that  Austria  should  restore  almost  the  whole  of  GaHcia  to 
Poland.  In  compensation,  she  might  take  back  those  frontier 
lands  which  had  been  left  to  her  by  the  treaty  of  Pozarevac 
(Passarowitz),  but  Prussia  was  to  indemnify  herself  for  her 
rival's  increase  of  territory  in  this  direction  by  the  acquisition 
of  Thorn  and  Danzig,  which  had  been  taken  from  Poland. 
Old  Kaunitz  rejected  these  insolent  conditions  "with  indigna- 
tion. On  the  27th  of  June,  1790,  a  congress  met  at  Reichen- 
bach,  at  which  Prussia,  Austria,  England,  and  Holland  were 
represented.  The  Prussian  diplomatist,  Herzberg,  the  inventor 
of  the  Fiirsteubund,  again  brought  forward  the  claims  of  Prussia 
relative  to  Galicia  and  the  towns  of  Thorn  and  Danzig.  On 
this  the  emperor  entered  into  secret  negociations  with  England, 
when  the  court  of  St.  James's  demanded  that  he  should  give  up 
his  conquests,  and,  in  return,  promised  that  England  would 
guarantee  his  possession  of  the  Netherlands.  Leopold,  how- 
ever, made  England  less  exacting  by  his  threat  of  ceding  to 
France  some  portion  of  Belgium,  and,  finally,  the  congress 
agreed  to  the  treaty  of  Sistova  (4th  August,  1791).  By  this 
treaty  Austria  had  to  give  up  her  late  conquests,  and  to  promise 


400  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

not  to  help  Russia  in  any  war  which  might  arise  between  her 
and  the  Porte,  and  she  only  gained  Orsovo  and  the  Unna 
district  on  the  borders  of  Croatia.  Thus  once  more  the  court 
of  Vienna  left  the  substance  for  the  shadow,  and  sacrificed 
territory  which  would  have  consolidated  her  real  frontiers,  in 
order  to  preserve  Belgium,  a  province  which  was  distant,  un- 
ruly, and  the  perpetual  object  of  the  greed  of  France. 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  Austria  to  remain  in- 
different to  the  progress  of  the  French  Revolution.  As 
emperor,  Leopold  had  to  defend  the  feudal  rights  of  the 
German  princes,  which  had  been  suppressed  in  Alsace, 
Franche-Comte,  and  Lorraine  by  the  National  Assembly,  and 
as  the  brother-in-law  of  Louis  XVI.,  he  watched  with  uneasi- 
ness the  progress  of  the  democracy  and  the  decay  of  the  royal 
authority.  In  July,  1791,  he  published  a  circular  dated  from 
Padua,  calling  upon -all  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  to  interfere 
in  favour  of  the  king  of  France  against  his  revolted  subjects ; 
and  shortly  after  he  had  the  famous  interview  with  Frederick 
William  II.  at  Pillnitz  (27th  August,  1791). 

The  result  of  this  interview  was  a  convention  in  which  the 
two  sovereigns  undertook  to  employ  the  most  effectual  means 
to  place  the  king  of  France  "  in  such  a  position  as  to  establish, 
with  perfect  freedom,  the  bases  of  a  monarchical  government 
which  shall  maintain  the  rights  of  sovereigns  and  conduce  to 
the  welfare  of  the  French  nation."  On  the  7th  of  February, 
1792,  Leopold  concluded  a  definitive  treaty  of  alliance  with 
the  court  of  Berlin,  and  on  the  ist  of  March  he  died  suddenly, 
leaving  to  his  son  Francis  II.  the  inheritance  of  the  most 
formidable  struggle  which  the  Austrain  empire  has  ever  had 
to  maintain.  On  the  20th  of  the  April  following,  France 
declared  war  against  the  king  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

FRANCIS    II.   (l  792-1835) — WARS   AGAINST   THE   REVOLUTION. 

A 71  stria  in   17 g2. 

It  may  not  be  uninteresting  to  give  a  short  account,  which  we 
shall  endeavour  to  make  as  complete  as  possible,  of  the  extent 
of  the  dominions  and  the  military  resources  of  Austria  at  the 
moment  when  she  was  about  to  take  part  in  the  great  Euro- 
pean war. 

"  If  we  omit  Tuscany  and  Modena,"  says  M.  Himly, 
"  territories  where  the  younger  branches  of  the  family  were 
either  already  reigning  or  were  expecting  to  reign,  the  empire 
of  the  Habsburgs  covered  an  extent  of  11,600  square  leagues 
(German),  and  contained  about  24,000,000  of  inhabitants. 
It  might  be  divided  into  two  almost  equal  portions,  according 
to  the  nature  of  the  territories.  The  country  which  more  or 
less  closely  belonged  to  the  German  empire  contained  a  popu- 
lation of  more  than  10,500,000  on  about  86,000  square  miles  ; 
the  provinces  outside  the  empire  had  a  Uttle  less  than  14,000,000 
on  nearly  164,000  square  miles.  Each  of  these  two  great 
divisions  contained  three  groups  which  were  historically  and 
politically  distinct.  On  one  side  were  the  two  circles  of 
Austria  and  of  Burgundy,  and  the  territories  of  the  crown 
of  Bohemia  which  were  not  divided  into  circles ;  and  on  the 
other  the  Hungarian,  Polish,  and  Italian  possessions  of  the 
monarchy. 

"  The  kingdom  of  St.  Stephen — that  is  to  say,  Hungary,  with 

2    D 


402  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  kingdoms  of  Croatia,  Slavonia,  Hungarian  Dalmatia,  and 
Transylvania — was  reckoned  at  about  125,800  square  miles 
and  zx  9.100,000  souls;  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia,  with 
Moravia  and  Silesia,  had  4,300,000  inhabitants  spread  over 
about  31,000  square  miles;  Galicia  and  the  Bukovina  had 
3,300,000  on  about  33,200  square  miles. 

"  Milan  and  Mantua,  with  the  imperial  fiefs  of  Liguria,  were 
reckoned  at  about  4700  scjuare  miles  and  1,350,000  inhabi- 
tants ;  and  the  Austrian  Low  Countries  at  2,000,000  inhabitants 
on  about  10,100  square  miles.  A  sixth  group  comprised  the 
imperial  domains  properly  so  called — that  is  to  say,  the  circle 
of  Austria  and  a  certain  number  of  unimportant  possessions 
scattered  over  those  of  Suabia  and  the  Lower  Rhine  ;  these 
measured  about  45,000  square  miles  and  Avere  occupied  by 
4,300,000  souls. 

"The  geographers  of  the  eighteenth  century  divided  the 
German  territories  of  Austria  into  four  graups  : — 

"  I.  Lower  Austria,  or  the  archduchy  of  Austria  properly 
so  called,  v/hich  included  the  lands  below  the  Enns  with 
Vienna,  and  the  lands  above  the  Enns  with  Linz,  to  which 
were  attached  the  Salzkammergut  (Hallstadt)  and  the  district 
of  the  Inn,  which  had  been  annexed  in  1779.  These  provinces 
were  entirely  German. 

"  2.  Inner  Austria,  including  the  four  duchies  of  Styria, 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  and  Friuli.  The  Austrian  dominions  on 
the  Adriatic,  the  counties  of  Gorica  and  Gradiska,  and  the 
districts  of  Aquileia  and  Idria,  Trieste  and  Fiume  (Rieka), 
Slav  countries  with  but  a  slight  mixture  of  Italian  colonists, 
were  grouped  together  in  the  duchy  of  Friuli ;  this  being, 
however,  rather  a  geographical  than  a  political  or  adminis- 
trative arrangement. 

"3.  Upper  Austria,  including  the  county  of  Tyrol  (Inns- 
briick)  and  the  Vorarlberg  (Feldkirch).  The  bishoprics  of 
Trent  and  Brixen,  a  few  bailiwicks  on  the  Adige  and  in 
Austria,  and  the  lordship  of  Tarasp  in  the  Engadine  were 
united  to  the  Tyrol  by  ties  of  vassalage,  and  the  county  of 


EXTENT  OF  AUSTRIA    IN  1792.  403 

Hohenembs  on  Lake  Constance,  with  the  lordship  of  Kozuns 
in  the  Grisons,  belonged  to  the  Vorarlberg. 

"4.  And  lastly,  Outer  Austria  (Vorderoesterreich),  which 
included  all  the  possessions  in  the  west  of  Germany ;  Breisgau 
with  its  dependencies  on  the  Rhine,  Rheinfelden,  Sackingen, 
Laufenberg,  and  Waldshut ;  and  Austrian  Suabia,  which  was 
made  up  of  a  number  of  domains  scattered  between  the  Upper 
Danube  and  the  Rhine.  The  only  bit  of  the  ancient  posses- 
sions belonging  to  Lorraine  which  now  remained  to  the  house 
of  Habsburg-Lorraine  was  the  small  county  of  Faikenstein  on 
Mount  Tonnerre,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine."  ^ 

In  fact,  the  Austrian  empire,  in  1792,  came  next  in  size  to 
Russia  and  France.  It  was  somewhat  larger  than  the  present 
Austrian  empire,  but  it  was  so  scattered  as  to  be  an  easy  prey 
to  any  enemy.  One  compact  group  was  formed  by  Bohemia, 
Galicia,  Hungary,  and  the  hereditary  provinces;  but  Milan 
and  Mantua  were  separated  from  them  by  Venetia ;  Breisgau 
and  Austrian  Suabia  were  queerly  mixed  up  with  the  innumer 
able  sovereign  states  of  the  Suabian  circle,  while  Belgium  was 
completely  isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  Austrian  dominions, 
and  was  anxious  to  throw  off  the  foreign  yoke.  The  effects 
of  war  were  sure  to  be  felt  first  in  these  outlying  districts. 

At  this  time  the  Austrian  army  consisted  of  two  hundred 
and  seventy  thousand  men.  There  were  seventy-seven  infantry 
regiments,  thirty-nine  of  which  were  furnished  by  the  German 
possessions  and  by  those  Slav  lands  which  were  not  included 
in  Hungary,  eleven  by  Hungary  and  Transylvania,  five  by  the 
Low  Countries,  two  by  Italy,  and  seventeen  by  the  military 
frontiers.  Garrisons  were  supplied  from  two  regiments  set 
apart  for  that  purpose;  and  there  were  two  regiments  of 
artillery.  Altogether  there  were  two  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  foot  soldiers.  In  the  cavalry  were  eleven  regiments 
of  heavy  horse,  sixteen  regiments  of  dragoons  and  hussars. 
and  eleven  regiments  of  uhlans  ;  fifty  thousand  horse  in  all, 

'  Himly,  Histoire  de  la  Fonnation  territoriale  des  Etats  de  TEurope 
Centrale,  vol.  i.  pp.  439-443. 


404  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

This  army  was  recruited  b}^  conscription,  which  had  been 
established  in  all  the  dominions  of  Joseph  11. ,  except  Tyrol, 
the  Low  Countries,  and  Hungary.  In  case  of  need  Hungary 
voted  the  insurrection^  and  raised  by  means  of  it  considerable 
levies. 

Loss  of  Belgium — Acquisition  of  Western  Galicia 
(1791-1795). 

The  prince  who  had  to  play  so  prominent  a  part  in  the 
coming  struggle  was  twenty-four  years  of  age  when  he  ascended 
the  throne.  He  had  been  educated  in  Tuscany  under  the 
patriarchal  rule  of  Leopold,  and  had  afterwards  resided  at  the 
court  of  Joseph  II.,  who  had  endeavoured  to  instil  in  him  his 
own  ideas  of  reform.  During  the  short  reign  of  Leopold  II.,  he 
had  seen  how  the  good  sense  and  patriotic  feeling  of  the  nation 
had  brought  about  an  inevitable  reaction  against  the  excesses  of 
Josephinism.  A  peaceful  reign  might  have  given  him  an  oppor- 
tunity for  displaying  those  respectable  and  homely  virtues 
which  he  owed  to  nature  and  education  ;  as  it  was,  his  pro- 
longed struggle  against  the  Revolution  made  him  in  the  end 
gloomy  and  despotic. 

When  the  war  broke  out,  Francis  II.  had  been  crowned 
both  at  Buda  and  at  Prague,  but  had  not  yet  been  elected 
emperor ;  war  was,  therefore,  declared  against  the  king  of 
Bohemia  and  Hungary.  It  is  not  always  easy  in  this  gigantic 
struggle  to  separate  the  military  history  of  Austria  from  that 
of  her  Prussian  and  German  allies.  The  utmost  that  can 
be  done  is  to  recall  the  names  of  the  principal  generals,  and 
so  try  to  discover  the  share  taken  in  the  war  by  the  various 
Austrian  nationalities.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  success  was  far 
rarer  than  defeat.  The  French  first  invaded  Belgium,  and  after 
the  battle  of  Jemmapes  (6th  November,  1792)  the  Austrian 
Netherlands  as  far  as  Luxemburg  fell  into  their  hands.  The 
victory  of  Clerfayt  atNeerwinden  on  the  iSth  of  March,  1793, 
opened  France  to  the  imperialists  for  a  moment,  and  that 
'   Vide  Siipra,  p.  233. 


LOSS  OF  BELGIUM.  405 

of  Wurmser  at  "  the  lines  of  Weissenburg  "  gave  Alsace  to 
them  ;  but  they  were  soon  obliged  to  recross  the  Rhine.  In 
1794,  the  emperor  came  himself  to  Belgium,  and  tried  to  recall 
victory  to  his  side,  but  the  battle  of  Fleurus,  on  the  26th  of 
June,  1794,  definitely  secured  the  Low  Countries  for  France. 

The  judicial  murder  of  Louis  XVI.  had  been  an  act  of- 
defiance  to  the  kings  of  Europe  in  general ;  the  execution 
of  Marie  Antoinette  was  an  act  of  defiance  to  the  house  of 
Austria  in  particular.  But  Francis  II.  had  no  power  either  to 
rescue  or  to  avenge  the  unfortunate  sister  of  his  father.  He 
had  been  abandoned  by  the  king  of  Prussia,  who  signed  the 
treaty  of  Basle  with  the  French  republic  in  1796,  and  all  he 
could  do  was  to  seek  for  some  compensation  for  the  loss 
of  the  Low  Countries  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Austrian 
dominions. 

This  compensation  he  found  on  the  side  of  Poland;  by 
the  treaty  of  St.  Petersburg  and  special  agreements  with  the  re- 
public, Austria  secured  the  palatinates  of  Sandomir  and  Lublin, 
together  with  some  portions  of  those  of  Cracow,  Masovia, 
Podlachia,  and  Brest,  as  far  as  the  junction  of  the  Bug  with  the 
Vistula.  This  territory  received  the  ofticial  name  of  Western 
Galicia,  and  was  united  to  Eastern  Galicia.  The  reasons 
given  for  this  fresh  partition  of  Poland  were  poor  enough. 
It  was  argued  that  Poland  had  become  the  home  of  revolu- 
tionary and  republican  ideas  which  might  prove  dangerous 
to  the  adjacent  countries,  and  that  Austria's  first  duty  was 
to  watch  over  its  own  interests,  as  the  aggrandisement  of  the 
two  neighbouring  powers  could  not  be  prevented.  No  pre- 
tended ancient  right  was  invoked  as  at  the  time  of  the  first 
partition  ;  ambition  alone  justified  the  inglorious  conquest. 
But  it  was  only  needful  to  look  at  a  map  to  see  that  the  new 
gain  could  not  be  lasting.  A  wedge  had  been  thrust  into  the 
very  heart  of  ancient  Poland,  to  the  centre  of  the  lands  which 
Russia  and  Prussia  had  set  apart  for  themselves.  "Sooner  or 
later,"  says  Himly,  "  it  was  quite  certain  that  one  or  other  of 
these  powers  must  be  tempted  to  round  off  their  possessions 


406  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

at  the  expense  of  Austria,  by  applying  to  her  that  system  of 
spoliation  which  had  already  succeeded  so  well  with  regard  to 
Poland."  The  new  territory  added  about  eighteen  hundred 
square  miles  and  eleven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants  to 
Austria,  but  this  was  but  an  insufficient  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  the  Low  Countries. 


Loss  of  Lombardy — Acquisition  of  Vetiice  a7id  Dalmatia  (1797). 

Abandoned  by  Prussia,  Austria  was  not  more  fortunate  in 
Italy  than  in  Belgium.  Bonaparte's  victories  at  Montenotte 
and  Millesimo  (April,  1796)  led  to  the  conquest  of  Lombardy 
and  the  establishment  of  the  Cisalpine  republic.  Bonaparte 
had  announced  to  the  Italians  that  he  only  made  war  on  the 
"tyrants  who  enslaved  them."  Who  could  have  guessed  that 
one  of  these  tyrants  was  the  future  father-in-law  of  Napoleon  I.? 
The  troops  of  Francis  II.  made  heroic  efforts  against  the  re- 
publican army,  but  they  were  beaten ;  defeated  at  Lonato 
Castiglione,  and  Bassano  (August  and  September,  1796), 
Wurmser  was  obliged  to  shut  himself  up  in  Mantua,  The 
Hungarian  general  Alvinzy  came  down  from  Friuli  to  his 
assistance,  but  suffered  great  defeats,  first  at  Areola  and  then 
at  Rivoli,  and  Wurmser  was  obliged  to  capitulate  at  Mantua 
in  February,  1797.  The  road  to  Vienna  lay  open  to  the 
conqueror.  In  this  position  of  affairs  the  aristocratic  republic 
of  Venice  believed  that  it  could  best  secure  its  independence 
and  prevent  the  spread  of  revolutionary  ideas  in  its  territory 
by  coming  to  terms  with  Austria  and  suddenly  attacking  the 
PVench.  This  course  of  action  cost  the  republic  its  freedom, 
and  led  to  its  being  reduced  to  such  a  state  of  servitude  as 
has  furnished  one  of  the  saddest  episodes  in  contemporary 
history.  After  the  fall  of  Mantua  the  emperor  saw  that  his 
southern  frontiers  were  in  great  danger,  and  he  determined 
to  make  a  desperate  effort  to  save  them.  His  first  step  was 
to  recall  his  brother,  the  archduke  Charles,  who  was  con- 
sidered to   be   the  ablest  of  the  Austrian  generals,  from  the 


VICTORIOUS  MARCH  OF  THE  FRENCH.  407 

army  of  the  Rhine,  with  which  he  had  been  fighting  gloriously 
against  Moreau  and  Jourdan  ;  the  inhabitants  of  Tyrol  and  of 
Bohemia  were  levied  en  masse,  and  the  insurrection  was  voted 
by   the    Hungarian   nobles.     The   archduke    endeavoured   to 
improve  the  organization  of  the  Austrian  army,  and  took  up 
his  position  behind  the  Tagliamento  in  order  to  defend  Trieste. 
But  meantime   Massena  had  obtained  possession  of  the  Col 
de  Tarvis,  over  which  the  main  road  from  Verona  to  Venice 
passes,  and  which  forms  the  key  to  the  passage  of  the  Alps. 
The   first  battle  between   Bonaparte  and  his  able  adversary 
took  place  on  the   i6th  of  March.     The  archduke  doubled 
back    on  the   Isonzo  and   tried    to  drive  Massena  from   the 
Tarvis,  but  he  was  obliged  to  withdraw  to  Klagenfurt,  and 
Bonaparte  continued  his  victorious  march,  sending  two  bodies 
of  troops  to  capture  Trieste  and  Idria,  while  he  himself  pushed 
on    to    Klagenfurt.     Meantime   Joubert,    on   the    left    of  the 
French  lines,  marched  up  the  Adige  and,  in  spite  of  all  the 
efforts  of  Loudon  and  Kerpen,  entered  Tyrol  by  the  Pusterthal. 
Vienna  was  now  in  great  danger,  but  the  patriotism  of  the 
luxurious  city  rose  to  the  occasion.     All  the  male  population 
took  up  arms ;  the  students  enrolled  themselves  and  formed  a 
regiment  of  their  own,  the  fortifications  were  repaired,  and 
the  war,  which  had  hitherto  been  one  only  of  political  principles, 
became,  on   the  approach  of  the  enemy,  a  nation's  struggle 
for   independence.     And   with    the   Viennese    patriotism  was 
blended  loyalty  to  the  sovereign.     Bonaparte  soon  saw  that  it 
would  be  dangerous  to  venture  into  a  country  which  was  so 
deeply  roused,  while  he  left  Italy  behind  him  in  a  doubtful 
condition,  and  before  he  had  brought  about  a  junction  with 
the  armies  on  the  Rhine.     On  the  31st  of  March,  1797,  he 
wrote    to    the   archduke  Charles  from   Klagenfurt,   proposing 
peace.     He  still,  however,  continued  his  advance  and  entered 
Styria,  and  it  was  at  Jiidenburg  that  he  received  lieutenant 
field-marshal    Bellegarde    and     major-general    Merfeldt,    the 
envoys   of  the  Austrian   court,  and  concluded  an  armistice. 
The  conditions  of  peace  were  discussed  in  the  castle  of  Gos, 


408  niSTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

not  far  from  the  small  town  of  Leoben,  and  there  the  pre- 
liminaries were  signed  by  Bonaparte  on  behalf  of  France  and 
the  marquis  of  Gallo  on  that  of  Austria. 

Austria  gave  up  to  France  Belgium  and  her  Italian 
possessions  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Oglio,  and  received  in 
exchange  a  portion  of  the  Venetian  territory  on  the  shores  of 
the  Adriatic.  Venice  obtained  Romagna,  Bologna,  and  Ferrara 
as  compensation. 

It  was  while  Bonaparte  was  signing  these  preliminaries 
that  a  movement  against  France  broke  out  in  the  republic  of 
Venice,  which  led  in  the  end  to  the  loss  of  her  independence. 
On  hearing  of  les  Fdqties  Veronaises^  the  French  troops  again 
invaded  Venetia  and  besieged  the  city  of  the  doges,  which, 
although  protected  by  the  sea,  was  quite  incapable  of  defending 
itself  against  generals  who  possessed  not  a  single  vessel.  By 
the  17th  of  May  Venice  was  occupied  by  the  French,  who 
planted  a  tree  of  liberty  in  her  midst,  and  by  the  24th  of 
May  the  preliminaries  of  Leoben  were  ratified. 

The  Austrian  government  lost  no  time  in  taking  possession 
of  the  newly  acquired  territory.  The  towns  of  Pirano,  Citta 
Nuova,  Parenzo,  and  Rovigno  in  Istria  were  first  occupied,  and 
then  the  islands  Cherso,  Arbe,  and  Pago.  Austrian  troops 
next  entered  Zara,  and  were  gladly  welcomed  by  a  population 
that  had  grown  w'eary  of  the  rule  of  Venice.  Meantime 
conferences  for  concluding  a  definite  peace  between  Austria 
and  the  French  republic  were  held  at  Udine,  count  Cobenzl 
being  sent  there  on  the  26th  of  September  as  Austrian  pleni- 
potentiary. It  was  during  these  conferences  that  Bonaparte, 
who  was  but  little  accustomed  to  control  the  violence  of  his 
temper,  is  said  to  have  broken  in  pieces  some  glasses  as  he 
exclaimed,  "  Thus  will  I  shatter  your  monarchy  ! "  Peace  was 
signed  at  the  castle  of  Campo-Formio  on  the  17th  of  No- 
vember,  1797.     In  it   Austria  renewed   her  concessions  and 

'  See  Histoire  dc  N^apoleon  i^f,  par  P.  Lanfrey,  tome  i.  chaps,  vii., 
viii.,  edition  1869,  Charpentier,  where  the  narrative  diflers  considerably 
from  that  in  the  text. 


PEACE   OF  CAMFO-FORMIO.  4O9 

recognized  the  Cisalpine  republic.  France  kept  the  Ionian 
Isles  and  the  Venetian  possessions  in  Albania ;  while  Austria 
received  as  compensation  the  whole  of  Venice  with  her 
dependencies.  The  duke  of  Modena,  who  had  been  deprived 
of  his  lands  for  the  benefit  of  the  Cisalpine  republic,  was  to  be 
indemnified  for  the  loss  of  his  duchy  by  the  cession  of  the 
Breisgau,  which  Francis  II.  gave  up  to  him. 

Secret  articles  were  joined  to  this  treaty  by  which  the 
emperor  engaged  to  help  France  to  obtain  possession  of  the 
left  bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  for  this  service  he  demanded  in 
exchange  the  help  of  France  to  enable  him  to  get  the  district 
of  Salzburg  and  that  part  of  Bavaria  which  lay  between  the 
Inn  and  the  Salza  and  intercepted  communication  with  the 
Tyrol.  La  Fayette,  who  had  been  a  prisoner  at  Olomouc 
(Olmutz)  ever  since  1792,  obtained  his  liberty  as  one  of  the 
consequences  of  the  treaty  of  Campo-Formio. 

On  the  whole,  notwithstanding  her  defeats,  Austria  was  the 
gainer  by  the  war.  She  had  held  her  own  against  France  when 
Prussia  had  already  abandoned  the  struggle,  and  she  was  less 
enfeebled  by  the  loss  of  the  Netherlands  than  strengthened  by 
the  addition  of  Venice  and  Dalmatia.  Her  new  territories 
contained  sixteen  thousand  six  hundred  and  twenty-five  square 
miles,  and  about  three  million  inhabitants.  Although  the 
French  had  destroyed  the  Venetian  fleet  before  evacuating 
Venice,  the  maritime  importance  of  the  new  acquisition  was 
very  great.  The  Adriatic  thus  became  almost  wholly  an  Austrian 
sea,  and  the  men  of  Dalmatia  were  skilful  mariners  and  brave 
soldiers.  This  province,  which  had  formerly  been  an  object  of 
so  much  desire  to  the  Hungarian  kings,  now  belonged  to  their 
successor,  who  had  not  even  had  the  trouble  of  conquering  it, 
and  from  this  time  it  shared  the  fate  of  Austria.  Let  us 
briefly  recall  its  history. 

We  have  already  seen  how  this  Roman  province  became 
part  of  the  kingdom  of  Croatia  after  its  colonization  by  the 
Slavs.  As  early  as  the  tenth  century  the  Venetians  had  begun 
the  conquest  of  the  islands  and  the  Dalmatian  coast,  but  it 


410  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

was  not  till  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  tliat  they 
completed  it,  the  republic  of  Ragusa  being  alone  able  to 
maintain  its  independence  owing  to  the  protection  of  the 
Porte.  The  interior  remained  united  to  Croatia,  and  even- 
tually fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks.  Thanks  to  Venetian 
colonization,  the  Slav  towns  were  greatly  influenced  by  Italy, 
and  traces  of  this  influence  remain  even  lo  the  present  day. 
Their  aristocratic  constitution  was  modelled  on  that  of  Venice  ; 
the  land  was  in  the  hands  of  a  io."^  families  ;  public  offices 
were  filled  only  by  Venetians  ;  and  the  native  population  was 
both  pillaged  and  persecuted.  A  decree  of  the  republic 
forbade  the  marriage  of  Venetians  with  Slav  women. 

The  administration  of  the  province  was  entrusted  to  a 
provveditore,  who  was  always  a  Venetian  senator  and  who  held 
office  for  three  years.  The  civil,  judicial,  and  military  power 
was  in  his  hands.  He  resided  at  Zara.  The  country  was 
divided  into  twenty-two  circles  {reggimenti),  which  were  all 
governed  by  Venetian  nobles,  whose  rule  was  at  once  servile  and 
corrupt.  The  army  was  composed  of  natives  {git  Schiavoni,  the 
Slavs),  and  twenty  towns  were  garrisoned  by  them,  but  all  the 
officers  were  Venetians.  Venice  did  little  for  public  instruction 
in  the  conquered  land ;  she  was  not  anxious  to  develop  any 
independent  civilization,  and  used  all  her  efforts  to  Italianize 
her  Slav  subjects.  It  was,  however,  only  out  of  hatred  to  Turkey 
that  the  Dalmatians  allowed  themselves  to  be  attached  to 
Venice,  and,  in  spite  of  Italian  influence,  a  national  literature 
struggled  into  existence,  though  it  succeeded  in  finding  a  real 
home  only  in  Ragusa. 

Marengo— Treaty  of  Luneville  (iSoi). 

The  work  of  Austrian  diplomacy  did  not  end  with  the 
treaty  of  Campo-Formio.  The  next  business  was  to  settle 
the  affairs  of  Germany.  Three  Austrian  diplomatists  were 
sent  to  the  congress  of  Rastadt,  one  of  whom  was  Metternich, 
the  father  of  the  man  who  afterwards  became  the  evil  genius 
of  Europe.    Cobenzl  was  another.     The  Rastadt  conferences 


ALLIANCE    WniL  RUSSIA.  411 

made  but  little   progress,  and  were    ended   abruptly    by  the 
assassination    of  the   French    representatives   in   April,   1799. 
This  strange  event  has  given  rise  to  many  conjectures.     Those 
who  are  anxious  to  clear  Austria  at  any  cost  attribute  the  act 
to  the  brutality  of  the  Szekler  hussars  and  their  exasperation 
against    the    Jacobins.       Others    believe    that    the    minister 
Thugut  was  the  instigator.     It  is  true  that  he  caused  colonel 
Barbaczy  and  captain  Burkhardt   to  be  arrested  and  thrown 
into  prison,  but  two  years  afterwards  they  were  set  at  liberty 
and    the    whole    affair    was    quashed.       It    is    probable    thai 
Austria  only  wished  to  obtain  possession  of  certain  papers 
and  had  no  wish  to  take  the  lives  of  the   envoys,   but  the 
brutal  hussars  exceeded  the  instructions  they  had   received. 
Another  event  occurred  about  the  same  time,  w^hich  helped  to 
complicate  matters  and  made  the  establishment  of  a  definite 
peace  between  France  and  Austria  almost  imposssible.     France 
had  sent  general  Bernadotte  as  ambassador  to  Vienna,  and  his 
behaviour  was  little  likely  to  conciliate  a  populition  irritated 
by   recent   defeat.      He    took   upon    himself  to    prevent   the 
celebration  of  a  military /^/^  in  the  town,  and  above  the  balcony 
of  his  hotel  in  the  Wallnerstrasse  he  displayed  the  tricoloured 
flag,  the  flag  of  that  revolutionary  party  which  had  beheaded 
Marie  Antoinette.     It  was  torn  down  by  the  infuriated  populace, 
whereupon   Bernadotte  demanded  his  passports   and  quitted 
Austria,  and  the  French  asked  for  an  apology  which  was  not 
granted.     In  view  of  the  forthcoming  struggle,  Cobenzl,  who 
had  succeeded  Thugut  as  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  tried  to 
obtain  allies  by  every  possible  means.     The  king  of  Naples 
was  able  to  help  no  one  after  the  victories  of  Championnet 
and  the  institution    of  the  Parthenopian-  Republic  (January, 
1799),  but  Russia  could  be  of  more  use ;  and  an  alliance  with 
her  was  followed  by  the  appearance    of  a  Russian   army  in 
Galicia  and  Moravia  towards  the  end  of  1798.     The  Directory 
in  vain  asked  for  some  explanation  of  this  violation  of  the  laws 
of  neutrality,  and  on  the  12th  of  March,  1799,  declared  war  on 
Austria. 


412  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  struggle  began  at  the  same  moment  in  Southern  Ger- 
many, Switzerland,  and  Italy.  The  coalition  had  got  together 
an  army  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  men,  Piedmont 
and  England  having  joined  Austria,  Russia,  and  Prussia. 

We  can  only  mention  the  principal  exploits  of  the  Austrian 
generals.  Kray  and  Melas  beat  the  incapable  Scherer  in  Italy 
at  Pastrengo,  Verona,  and  Magnano,  and  after  Suvorov  had 
taken  the  command  of  the  combined  Russian  and  Austrian 
troops,  he  obtained  the  victories  of  Cassano,  Trebbia,  and  Novi 
in  the  summer  of  1799. 

The  return  of  Bonaparte  to  Italy  restored  victory  to  .the 
French  flag,  and  the  triumphant  progress  of  Melas  Avas  stopped 
by  the  battle  of  Marengo  on  the  14th  of  June,  1800.  After  the 
capitulation  of  Alessandria  he  was  forced  to  retreat  as  far  as 
the  Mincio.  In  Southern  Germany,  Kray  was  defeated  by 
Moreau  at  Engen,  Moeskirch,  Biberach,  and  Memmingen. 
Tired  of  the  useless  struggle,  Austria  seemed  to  be  now  ready 
for  peace,  and  general  Saint-Julien  and  Talleyrand  drew  up  the 
sketch  of  a  treaty  in  Paris  in  July,  1800,  which  had  the  stipu- 
lations of  Campo-Formio  as  its  basis,  only  adding  a  secret 
agreement  that  the  compensation  to  Austria  which  had  formerly 
been  guaranteed  in  Germany  should  now  be  taken  from  Italy. 

But  Saint-Julien  had  gone  beyond  his  powers,  and  Austria, 
with  the  support  of  subsidies  from  England,  continued  the  war. 
Melas  and  Kray,  guilty  of  having  been  defeated,  were  displaced, 
and  their  posts  were  given  to  Bellegarde  and  the  archduke 
John.  By  this  time  the  war  had  become  exceedingly  unpopular 
in  Austria,  and  Thugut,  who  was  the  representative  of  English 
interests,  was  obliged  to  resign,  and  his  post  was  filled  by 
Cobenzl,  who  had  represented  Austria  at  Leoben.  On  the 
3rd  of  December,  1800,  came  the  defeat  of  Hohenlinden,  which 
was  a  cruel  blow  to  the  Austrian  army.  On  that  day,  it  lost 
four  thousand  seven  hundred  dead  and  wounded,  seven 
thousand  prisoners,  and  eighty  cannon ;  while  their  allies,  the 
Bavarians,  lost  five  thousand  men  and  twenty-four  guns. 

The  archduke  Charles  had  taken  no  part  in  the  war  since 


PEACE   OF  LUNEVILLE.  413 

his  victory  over  Jourdan  at  Stockach  on  the  25th  of  March, 
1799  ;  he  now  once  more  took  the  command,  in  the  hope  of 
saving  Austria,  but  he  found  only  the  wreck  of  the  army  which 
he  had  formerly  led  to  victory.  The  French  had  reached 
Steyer,  and  were  as  close  to  Vienna  as  they  had  been  when 
they  were  at  Leoben.  Austria  had  no  choice.  An  armistice  was 
concluded  (20th  October,  1800),  by  which  Wiirzburg,  Braumau, 
Kiifstein,  Peschiera,  Legnago,  Verona,  Ferrara,  Ancona,  and 
Mantua  were  all  abandoned  to  the  French,  while  a  line  of 
demarcation  was  drawn  between  the  two  armies  which  gave 
them  also  the  whole  of  the  Tyrol,  together  with  some  portion 
of  the  archduchy  of  Austria,  Styria,  and  Illyria.  Austria  also 
undertook  to  make  peace,  whatever  might  be  the  decision  of 
her  allies. 

Cobenzl  was  sent  to  Luneville  to  settle  the  terms  of  the 
treaty  with  Joseph  Bonaparte.  France  insisted  that  the 
emperor  should  treat  not  only  on  his  own  behalf,  but  also 
for  the  whole  of  Germany,  and,  though  he  had  no  right  to  do 
this,  he  was  obliged  to  agree.  The  conditions  of  the  peace  of 
Luneville  (9th  February,  1801)  were  almost  the  same  as  those 
of  the  treaty  of  Campo-Formio.  Francis  II.  gave  up  to  France 
or  to  her  ally,  the  Helvetian  repubhc,  the  county  of  Falkenstein 
in  Mount  Tonnerre,  the  lordship  of  Tarasp  in  the  Engadine, 
and  Frickthal,  Laufenburg,  and  Rheinfelden,  old  possessions 
of  the  Habsburg  family  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine.  In 
exchange,  the  western  boundary  of  his  Venetian  territory  was 
moved  forward  as  far  as  the  Adige ;  but  he  had  to  give  up 
Artenau  to  the  duke  of  Modena-Breisgau.  The  archduke 
Ferdinand  III.  was  called  upon  to  exchange  his  duchy  of 
Tuscany  for  the  new  electorate  of  Salzburg,  which  had  been 
formed  out  of  the  archbishopric  of  Salzburg,  the  district  of 
Berchtolsgaden,  and  some  portions  of  the  bishoprics  of  Passau 
and  Eichstadt.  The  formation  of  this  new  electorate  deprived 
Austria  of  almost  a  million  subjects. 

Thus  we  see  that  Francis  II.  had  failed  in  what  was  his 
first   duty  as    emperor,    the   preservation    of   the  integrity  of 


414  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Ciermany.  The  dispossessed  princes  turned  their  attention 
to  Paris,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  some  compensation  for  their 
losses.  The  prince-bishops,  who  had  been  the  most  zealous 
supporters  that  the  essentially  Catholic  Habsburgs  possessed 
in  Germany,  had  disappeared,  owing  to  the  secularization  of 
the  ecclesiastical  states.  It  is  true  that  Austria  had  obtained 
possession  of  the  bishoprics  of  Trent  and  Brixen ;  but  for 
some  time  past  these  places  had  recognized  the  suzerainty  of 
Tyrol,  and  the  acquisition  was  one  only  in  name.  The 
position  of  the  Habsburgs  in  Germany  had  become  extremely 
precarious,  and  we  shall  soon  see  Francis  deciding  to  add  to 
the  pompous  but  empty  title  of  Roman  emperor  the  new  and 
more  real  title  of  emperor  of  Austria.  Before,  however,  reach- 
ing that  important  event,  we  must  spend  a  short  time  in 
studying  the  condition  of  the  Austrian  dominions  during  the 
troublous  times  of  his  reign. 

Austria  after  the  Peace  of  Luneville. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  result  of  the  long  war  was  that 
it  had  led  the  subjects  of  Austria,,  and  especially  the  army, 
to  a  keener  sense  of  the  unity  of  the  monarchy.  The  soldiers, 
who  belonged  to  so  many  different  nations,  but  who  for  almost 
ten  years  had  fought  side  by  side  in  the  Low  Countries,  Italy, 
Germany,  and  the  Austrian  fatherland  {Gesammivaterland), 
became  united  in  the  brotherhood  of  arms.  A  body  of  officers 
grew  up  embodying  in  itself  the  principle  on  which  the  Austrian 
state  rested.  A  Viennese  poet,  writing  to  Radetsky  in  1848,  says, 
"  It  is  in  your  camp  that  Austria  is  to  be  found."  This  was  true 
almost  as  early  as  the  year  1800.  Austria  was  at  this  time  before 
all  things  a  military  empire,  and  the  strange  assemblage  of  its 
divergent  peoples  was  alone  kept  in  stable  equilibrium  by  the 
army.  But  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  composed  of  men  belong- 
ing to  different  nations,  the  Austrian  army  has  never  been  a  Pre- 
torian  band,  affecting  a  disdainful  superiority  over  civilians,  as 
was  the  case  in  Prussia  and  in  France  under  Napoleon  I.  The 
nobles  of  the  various  countries  rivalled  each  other  in  their 


CONDITION  OF  AUSTRIA.  415 

enthusiastic  struggle  against  the  French  Revolution.  Twice 
the  Magyars  "raised  the  insurrection!''  In  1796  and  1797,  both 
the  Tyrolese  and  the  inhabitants  of  Lower  Austria  took  up 
arms  en  masse ;  in  1796,  the  national  militia  was  organized  in 
Bohemia;  in  1800,  a  regiment  of  chasseurs  was  formed  in 
Moravia  and  Silesia  ;  and  in  the  same  year  a  special  legion  was 
organized  in  Bohemia,  under  the  influence  of  the  archduke 
Charles. 

The  direction  of  military  affairs  still  remained  in  the  hands 
of  the  Hofkriegsrath  at  Vienna,  composed  partly  of  officers  and 
partly  of  civilians.  In  spite  of  the  zeal  of  its  members,  the 
council  did  but  little  good,  and  was  indeed  a  mistake,  only 
serving  to  prove  the  impossibility  of  directing  military  opera- 
tions from  a  government  office;  during  the  campaign  of  1789, 
Suvorov  refused  to  communicate  his  plans  to  it.  In  1801, 
tlie  emperor  appointed  the  archduke  Charles  to  be  its  presi- 
dent. In  1802,  the  military  service  of  the  common  soldiers, 
which  had  hitherto  had  no  limit,  was  reduced  to  fourteen 
years. 

Foreign  affairs  were  in  the  hands  of  the  celebrated  Thugut 
during  almost  the  whole  of  this  stormy  period.  Kaunitz,  who 
had  been  at  the  head  of  the  chancery  during  three  reigns,  and 
who  had  once  had  the  satisfaction  of  bringing  into  alliance  the 
hostile  courts  of  Vienna  and  Paris,  had  given  in  his  resignation 
in  1796.  Thugut  was  born  at  Linz  in  1736.  His  earliest  im- 
portant employment  had  been  on  diplomatic  missions  to  the 
East  and  as  internuncio  at  Constantinople,  and  from  the  East  he 
had  brought  back  the  habit  of  court  intrigue.  Sent  to  Paris  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  he  had  played  an  important 
part  in  the  negociations  between  Marie  Antoinette  and  Mira- 
beau.  He  was  violently  opposed  to  the  French  republic,  and 
his  resignation  had  been  made  one  of  the  secret  conditions  of 
the  treaty  of  Campo-Formio.  He  retired  into  private  life  after 
the  1 8th  of  October,  1800. 

Joseph  Cobenzl  was  born  at  Brussels  in  1753,  and  re- 
ceived his  political  education  in  the  government  of  Galicia, 


41 6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

and  in  the  post  of  ambassador  at  the  courts  of  Berlin  and  St. 
Petersburg.  To  his  ability  it  was  due  that  Austria  and  Russia 
remained  on  good  terms  for  sixteen  years.  He  took  part  in 
the  treaty  of  Campo-Formio  and  the  negociations  of  Rastadt, 
and  it  was  he  who  persuaded  Russia  to  set  on  foot  her  army 
in  1798.  He  remained  at  the  head  of  foreign  affairs  after 
the  peace  of  Luneville  down  to  1805  ;  but  he  was  an  agreeable 
and  clever  courtier  rather  than  an  able  statesman.  He  must 
not  be  confounded  with  his  cousin,  John  Louis  Cobenzl,  who 
was  Austrian  ambassador  in  Paris  after  the  peace  of  Luneville, 
and  who  had  more  than  once  to  suffer  from  the  insolence  of 
Napoleon. 

In  the  management  of  home  affairs,  the  struggle  still  went 
on  between  the  partisans  oi  Josephinism  and  its  adversaries. 
Under  other  circumstances  the  former  might  have  adopted  the 
principles  of  the  French  Revolution,  for  that  they  had  been  to 
some  extent  adopted  in  Hungary  is  proved  by  the  Martinovic 
conspiracy.  In  Vienna  only  one  plot  against  the  existing  govern- 
ment was  discovered.  An  officer  named  Franz  Hebenstreit 
was  accused  of  having  betrayed  the  secret  of  a  line  of  march 
to  the  French  and  Poles,  and  of  having  been  the  author  of 
some  seditious  songs  ;  he  was  condemned  to  death,  and  his 
accomplices  to  various  other  punishments.  Foreign  wars 
prevented  almost  all  attempts  at  reform.  A  special  depart- 
ment for  finance  and  for  Galicia  was  formed,  and  a  new  commis- 
sion of  instruction,  but  no  plan  for  uniting  the  administration 
of  the  various  countries  was  adopted. 

We  are  enabled  to  judge  of  the  confusion  which  prevailed 
at  the  time  from  the  following  extract  from  a  memorandum 
addressed  to  the  emperor  by  count  Chotek  : — "  The  reign  of 
your  Majesty  has  been  one  long  list  of  changes.  A  special 
department  I^Hofstelle)  has  been  made  of  the  police ;  the 
chamber  of  accounts,  which  was  founded  in  1761,  and  which 
was  made  completely  independent  in  1782,  has  been  dissolved. 
The  affairs  of  each  country  have  once  more  been  first  treated 
separately,  and  responsibiUty  thrown  on  the  local  government ; 


COUNT  CHOTEICS  MEMORANDUAf.  417 

and  now  they  have  again  been  placed  under  central  control.  A 
new  commission  of  instruction  has  been  established,  and  the 
two  legislative  commissions  which  formerly  existed  have  been 
made  into  one.  Since  the  peace  of  Campo-Formio  a  number 
of  other  changes  have  been  made.  The  finances  have  been 
withdrawn  from  the  control  of  the  united  Hofsfelle,  and  count 
Saurau  has  been  appointed  president  of  the  court  chamber 
and  minister  of  finance.  The  supreme  control  of  justice  has 
been  vested  in  the  Austro-Bohemian  chancery,  and  a  special 
department  created  for  Galicia,  which  includes  both  justice 
and  political  matters.  These  two  changes  are  evidently  a 
mistake.  On  the  one  hand,  two  new  departments  are  created 
for  provinces  whose  constitution  is  the  same ;  and,  on  the 
other,  a  minister  is  overwhelmed  with  duties  which  are  absolutely 
heterogeneous.  In  1801,  after  count  Saurau  was  appointed 
to  a  new  office,  a  ministerial  board  of  control  for  the  bank  and 
a  secret  board  of  credit  were  created,  and  the  Camerale 
(finances)  was  once  more  joined  to  the  department  of  political 
affairs.  There  was  only  one  minister  for  the  two  departments 
of  justice  and  political  affairs  ;  as  head  of  the  ministry,  he  had 
the  control  of  justice,  and,  as  minister,  of  the  finances ;  an 
amount  of  work  which  no  man  could  get  through.  And  the 
administration  of  the  finances  was  put  out  of  joint  at  the  very 
moment  when  their  precarious  condition  demanded  central 
and  united  control. 

"  As  soon  as  peace  was  restored,"  continues  Chotek,  "  the 
emperor  tried  to  establish  an  organization  likely  to  last.  He 
instituted  the  Confereiizt/iinisierium  as  a  central  point  in  which 
all  the  branches  of  the  administration  should  meet,  and  from 
that  time  the  home,  foreign,  and  military  affairs  of  the 
monarchy  have  been  conducted  in  unison.  A  special  docu- 
ment, drawn  up  by  the  minister  of  war,  has  stated  what 
matters  were  to  be  brought  before  the  conference,  what  were 
to  be  submitted  to  the  emperor,  what  were  to  be  decided  by 
himself,  and  what  were  to  be  brought  before  the  council  of  war. 

In  civil  affairs  it  was  necessary  to  bring  all  government 

2    E 


41 8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

officials  throughout  the  country  into  relations  with  each  other 
in  such  a  way  that  each  one  should  immediately  depend  on 
the  responsible  minister.  It  was  necessary  to  determine  the 
powers  of  each  official,  from  the  village  magistrate  to  the 
minister,  in  such  a  way  that  it  might  be  impossible  for  any 
one  of  them  to  overstep  the  limits  of  his  authority,  that  each 
official  should  know  at  once  what  matters  he  could  decide  and 
what  must  be  referred  to  a  higher  office,  and  that  in  the  end  the 
emperor  should  always  be  in  possession  of  complete  knowledge 
of  important  matters  without  being  troubled  with  useless  details. 

"  This  result  has  not  yet  been  attained.  .  .  .  The  internal 
administration  has  been  badly  organized.  Matters  of  small 
importance  are  continually  brought  before  the  notice  of  the 
emperor  and  the  conference.  The  proposals  that  have  been 
made  have  gone  no  further  than  fragmentary  attempts  at 
legislation  and  temporary  measures  concerning  the  finances 
and  other  matters.  No  attempt  has  been  made  to  organize 
the  departments ;  to  study  the  wants  of  the  estates  as  a  whole, 
or  the  means  of  satisfying  those  wants;  to  improve  the 
condition  of  the  country  by  trade  and  commerce,  or  to  found 
really  useful  schools.  For  these  matters  there  has  been  none 
of  that  unity  of  action  for  which  the  Couferenzmiiiisterium  was 
created.  The  division  of  the  conferences  into  two  categories — 
conferences  limited  to  the  consideration  of  internal  affairs, 
and  grand  conferences — has  been  opposed  to  the  views  of  your 
Majesty,  and  has  led  to  collisions  between  the  departments." 
What  count  Chotek  went  on  to  ask  for,  as  popular  parlia- 
mentary government  was  not  to  be  had,  was  such  a  council  of 
ministers  as  exists  now  in  all  European  countries.  The  re- 
forms he  wanted  were  achieved  later  on. 

Eight  years  of  war  could  not  fail  to  exhaust  the  finances  of 
an  empire  as  poor  as  Austro-Hungary  was  at  that  time.  The 
emperor  mortgaged  his  private  estates  in  order  to  obtain 
money,  and  the  various  provinces  and  corporations,  and  even 
private  persons,  rivalled  each  other  in  their  zeal  and  their 
sacrifices.     All  sorts  of  expedients  were  had  recourse  to ;  the 


REACTIONARY  POLICY  OF  FRANCIS  II.  419 

quantity  of  paper  money  was  increased,  forced  loans  were 
raised,  the  duties  on  merchandise  were  maintained  at  a  height 
which  was  absolutely  intolerable  to  trade,  and  the  protective 
system  continued  in  full  force  with  all  its  abuses.  Internal 
freedom  of  trade,  which  Joseph  I.  had  introduced,  was  de- 
stroyed, and  a  line  of  custom-houses  was  once  more  established 
between  Hungary  and  the  rest  of  the  Austrian  dominions. 

The  construction  of  roads  was  pushed  on  with  great 
activity,  especially  in  Carniola,  Croatia,  Bohemia,  and  Moravia, 
and  a  canal  was  made  between  the  Danube  and  the  Tisza. 
The  emperor  was  proud  of  his  fondness  for  agriculture,  and 
founded  several  special  schools  for  the  study  of  it.  He  took 
great  pains  to  develop  the  rural  economy  of  Galicia,  where,  it 
must  be  owned,  Polish  neglect  had  left  much  to  be  done,  and 
in  1799  serfdom  was  abolished;  gradually  some  degree  of 
order  was  introduced  into  that  province.  Many  charitable 
institutions  were  founded  in  this  reign. 

The  work  of  codification,  which  had  been  begun  in  the  reign 
of  Maria  Theresa,  continued,  and  volumes  i.,  ii.,  and  iii.  of  the 
code  were  published  in  1794,  1795,  ^^<^  '^19^-  Unfortunately 
Francis  H.  did  nothing  for  public  instruction ;  he  had  neither 
time  nor  wish  to  do  so.  The  dread  lest  the  ideas  of  the 
French  Revolution  should  make  their  way  into  x\ustria  led  him 
to  apply  to  freedom  of  thought  a  prohibitive  system  even  more 
strict  than  that  which  weighed  so  heavily  on  trade.  The 
censorship  of  the  press  was  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
professors,  to  be  placed  in  those  of  the  police,  and  a  tax 
on  printed  matter  was  introduced.  In  many  ways  the  reign  of 
Francis  II.  was  the  opposite  of  that  of  Joseph  II.  In  his  horror 
of  liberal  ideas,  Francis  believed  that  he  could  not  combat 
them  better  than  by  strengthening  religious  institutions  and  the 
influence  of  the  clergy  throughout  his  dominions,  and  he  took 
every  possible  means  of  doing  so,  although  he  did  not  revoke 
the  laws  establishing  religious  toleration.  A  commission  was 
appointed  in  1795  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of  education, 
but  the  alterations  proposed  by  it  showed  but  little  liberal  feeling 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

FRANCIS  II. WARS  AGAINST  NAPOLEON  TO  THE  TREATY  OF 

SCHONBRUNN  (1801-1809). 

Francis  II.,  Emperor  of  Austria  (1804). 

After  the  peace  of  Lun^ville,  the  most  important  act  of  the 
reign  of  Francis  II.  was  his  adoption  of  the  title  of  emperor 
of  Austria.  The  house  of  Habsburg-Lorraine  had  by  this  time 
lost  all  its  German  possessions  outside  the  archduchy  of 
Austria,  and  the  authority  of  the  emperor  over  the  German 
states  had  become  absurdly  unreal.  In  fact,  Austria  was  out- 
side of  Germany ;  all  the  power  she  possessed  she  derived 
from  her  own  dominions.  These  were  henceforth  divided 
into  five  principal  groups,  the  Hereditary  Provinces,  the  king- 
dom of  Bohemia,  the  kingdom  of  Hungary,  Galicia,  and  Venetia. 
The  three  first  belonged  to  the  sovereign  by  hereditary  right, 
or  by  contracts  voluntarily  entered  into  by  both  parties ;  the 
two  last  had  been  recently  conquered,  and  were  maintained 
in  a  state  of  obedience  by  force.  It  seemed  as  if  the  old  titles 
of  archduke  of  Austria,  of  king  of  Bohemia  and  of  Hungary, 
had  become  insufficient  for  the  owner  of  so  many  posses- 
sions, and  Francis  II.  wished  to  add  to  them  one  which  would 
be  more  elastic  and  more  capable  of  impressing  Europe  and 
the  countries  he  had  recently  conquered.  The  reigning 
dynasty  had  long  been  known  by  the  name  of  the  house  of 
Austria,  and  though  the  countries  governed  by  the  Habsburgs 


FRANCIS,    EMPEROR   OF  AUSTRIA.  42 1 

were  still  far  from  being  a  homogeneous  whole,  they  had  been 
definitely  grouped  round  the  Austrian  dynasty  by  the  Prag- 
matic Sanction.  Notwithstanding  their  inflexible  attachment 
to  the  privileges  of  their  nation,  the  Magyars  had  accepted 
the  principle  of  hereditary  succession,  and  an  exhausted 
Bohemia  had  long,  at  least  in  appearance,  been  pacified.  It 
was  on  the  nth  of  August,  1804,  that  Francis  II.  took  the 
title  of  emperor  of  Austria.  On  the  i8th  of  the  preceding 
May,  the  imperial  title  had  been  declared  hereditary  in  the 
family  of  Napoleon  I.,  and  this  event  had  certainly  not  been 
without  its  influence  on  the  decision  of  Francis.  On  the 
loth  of  August  he  assembled  a  Staatsconferenz  extraordinary, 
to  which  were  summoned  the  archduke  Charles,  the  archduke 
Joseph  as  palatine  of  Hungary,  the  ministers  of  state,  the 
chancellors  of  Bohemia,  Austria,  Hungary,  and  Transylvania, 
the  taverm'cus,  or  chief  minister  of  finance  in  Hungary,  and  the 
Kafnmerprdsident.  He  announced  his  decision  to  them,  and 
the  next  day  issued  a  letter-patent  to  his  people,  of  which  the 
following  are  the  principal  passages  : — 

"Although  by  the  grace  of  God,  and  the  choice  of  the 
electors  of  the  Romano-Germanic  empire,  we  have  been  raised 
to  such  a  degree  of  splendour  as  leaves  us  no  title  to  desire, 
nevertheless  our  solicitude  as  ruler  of  the  house  and  monarchy 
of  Austria  induces  us  to  insist  on  the  maintenance  of  complete 
equality  between  our  imperial  title  and  hereditary  dignity,  and 
those  of  the  other  sovereigns  and  illustrious  powers  of  Europe, 
in  such  fashion  as  befits  the  ancient  splendour  of  our  house 
and  the  greatness  and  independence  of  our  kingdoms  and 
principalities.  We  have,  therefore,  been  induced,  after  the 
example  of  the  imperial  court  of  Russia  in  the  last  century,  and 
of  the  new  sovereign  of  France,  to  claim  for  the  house  of 
Austria  an  hereditary  imperial  title  for  its  own  states.  For 
these  reasons  we  have  determined,  after  mature  deliberation, 
to  take  solemnly  for  ourselves  and  our  successors,  for  the  whole 
of  our  kingdoms  and  lands,  the  hereditary  title  of  emperor  of 
Austria  after  the  name  of  our  house.     At  the  same  time,  we 


422  niSTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

declare  that  each  one  of  our  kingdoms,  our  principaUties,  and 
our  provinces  shall  nevertheless  preserve  its  title,  constitution, 
and  privileges." 

This  measure  crowned  the  patient  work  of  the  house  of 
Austria,  but  it  made  no  change  in  the  condition  of  any 
of  the  various  provinces.  Francis  II.  and  his  successor, 
Ferdinand  IV.,  were  both  crowned  kings  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary,  and  renewed  the  engagements  taken  by  their 
predecessors  towards  the  kingdoms  of  St.  Vacslav  and  St. 
Stephen ;  but  no  Austrian  sovereign  has  ever  been  crowned  as 
emperor  of  Austria.  The  new  title  was  recognized  by  foreign 
courts  without  demur.  Francis  11.  made  no  attempt  to  break 
the  ties  which  attached  some  of  his  domains  to  Germany,  and 
solemnly  declared  to  the  German  Reichstag  that  he  would  not 
do  so.  He  seems  never  to  have  lost  the  hope  of  one  day 
ruling  Germany,  and  it  was  his  interest  to  appear  to  possess 
as  large  a  number  of  German  states  as  possible.  The  solemn 
act  of  the  nth  of  August,  1804,  made  but  little  impres- 
sion on  the  people,  who  had  always  been  accustomed  to  see 
the  title  of  emperor  joined  to  that  of  king  on  all  public  docu- 
ments ;  but  by  thus  declaring  the  historical  unity  of  the 
Austrian  dominions,  Francis  added  a  corollary  to  the  Prag- 
matic Sanction,  which  Charles  VI.  could  not  have  ventured 
to  hope  for  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

PYancis  was  thirty-six  years  old  when  he  took  the  imperial 
title.  Events  had  aged  him  before  his  time,  and  he  had 
become  timid  and  suspicious.  He  knew  no  science  except 
natural  science,  no  art  except  music,  the  only  great  art  which 
has  ever  flourished  in  i^ustria.  He  was  a  complete  stranger 
to  all  the  new  ideas  of  the  eighteenth  century.  His  power  lay 
in  that  patient  persistence  which  is  looked  upon  as  the  special 
characteristic  of  the  Habsburgs,  and  he  affected  that  patri- 
archal mode  of  life  and  that  popularity  which  is  sometimes 
to  be  found  combined  with  ideas  of  absolutism  and  love  of 
tyrannical  power.  He  wished  to  be  the  father  of  his  people, 
but  a  father  who   would   not  willingly  allow  his  children   to 


NEW  WAR  AGAINST  NAPOLEON.  423 

argue  with  him.  He  meant  his  power  to  be  uncontrolled,  and 
the  trials  which  he  met  with  in  his  life  only  served  to  confirm 
him  in  his  ideas  of  absolutism.  He  took  for  his  motto  the 
words  '■''Justitia  regnoriim  fundamentiim"  but  he  explained 
their  meaning  in  his  own  fashion.  The  only  power  which 
rivalled  that  of  the  emperor  was  that  bureaucracy  which  had 
been  made  the  motive  power  of  all  government  by  Joseph  II. 
The  Hungarians  preserved  their  old  independence,  but  Bohemia 
had  not  yet  awakened  from  her  state  of  torpor,  and  the 
Austrians  proper  prided  themselves  on  seeing  in  their  emperor 
absolutism  incarnate.  "  Es  giebt  nur  ein  Kaiserstadi,  es  giebt 
nur  ein  Wien  "  ("  There  is  only  one  imperial  city,  there  is  only 
one  Vienna") — this  popular  saying  of  the  Viennese  sufficed  to 
flatter  their  self-love,  just  as  music  sufficed  to  lull  to  sleep 
their  indolent  minds. 

New  War  against  Napoleon — Treaty  of  Pressbiirg  (1805), 

From  1 80 1  to  1805  the  direction  of  foreign  affairs  was  in 
the  hands  of  the  vice-chancellor,  Louis  Cobenzl.  He  was  a 
politician  of  the  old  school,  tricky  and  courteous,  and  the 
young  ambassadors  who  served  under  him,  Stahrenberg  in 
London,  ]\Ietternich  in  Dresden,  and  Stadion  in  Berlin,  were 
all  abler  men  than  himself.  From  the  year  1803  he  secured 
the  services  of  Frederick  Genz,  the  most  powerful  political 
writer  of  Germany,  and  one  of  the  most  formidable  of  the 
opponents  of  the  French  Revolution.  Genz  was  a  Silesian, 
born  after  the  conquest  of  that  province,  and  he  had  studied 
at  the  university  of  Konigsburg.  Owing  to  the  miserable 
state  of  public  education,  and  the  antagonism  of  her  divers 
nationalities,  Austria  could  rarely  find  the  men  she  needed 
among  her  own  subjects,  but  was  forced  to  seek  them  in 
foreign  lands.  This  strange  state  of  things  has  been  seen 
even  down  to  our  own  day,  when  Beust  was  invited  to  come 
from  Dresden  to  reconstruct  the  empire  after  the  battle  of 
Sadowa.  Cobenzl's  ministry  contained  no  man  of  mark ;  the 
archduke  Charles,  the  victor  of  Neerwinden  and  Stockach,  was 


424  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

the  only  one  of  real  worth.  In  1801,  he  was  made  field-marshal 
and  president  of  the  council  of  war,  and  introduced  some 
ideas  of  reform  into  his  own  department.  He  was  really 
popular  in  Austria,  and  was  the  only  general  who  could  be 
opposed  to  the  armies  of  Napoleon  with  any  chance  of  success. 
Since  1801  the  relations  between  Austria  and  France  had 
in  appearance  been  cordial,  and  the  Austrian  ambassador  in 
Paris  had  been  most  attentive  to  the  new  emperor.  A  saying 
of  Cobenzl's  was  quoted  in  Vienna :  "  The  monarchs  of 
Europe  have  in  Napoleon  a  colleague  for  whom  they  need 
not  blush."  But,  in  reality,  the  heir  of  the  revolution  could  be 
nothing  but  the  enemy  of  Austria,  and  "  Buonaparte  "  inspired 
in  the  court  and  among  the  nobles  a  hatred  which  longed  to 
express  itself  in  a  renewal  of  hostilities.  England  and  Russia, 
therefore,  had  no  difficulty  in  drawing  Austria  into  a  new 
alliance  to  curb  the  encroachments  of  France.  In  case  of 
success  she  was  promised  the  Po  and  the  Adda  as  her  frontier, 
the  annexation  of  Salzburg,  and  the  restoration  of  the  right  of 
the  second  son  of  the  house  of  Habsburg  to  reign  in  Tuscany, 
while  England  undertook  to  pay  ^1,250,000  for  every  hundred 
thousand  men  under  arms ;  on  these  conditions  Austria  fur- 
nished three  hundred  and  thirty-five  thousand  troops.  The 
archduke  Charles  was  opposed  to  the  idea  of  fighting  Napoleon 
when  he  was  intoxicated  by  success  and  had  Prussia  and 
Germany  ready  to  help  him;  he  consequently  gave  in  his 
resignation  as  president  of  the  high  council  of  war,  and  his 
place  was  filled  by  general  Latour,  whom  the  Viennese  called 
the  old  War-Drum.  Prince  Charles  of  Schwarzenburg  was 
made  vice-president,  and  Mack  major-general.  Great  con- 
fidence was  felt  in  the  talents  of  Mack.  He  was  at  this 
time  fifty-three  years  of  age,  and  had  fought  under  Loudon 
and  Lascy.  It  was  true  he  had  not  always  been  successful, 
having  been  beaten  by  Championnet  in  the  kingdom  of 
Naples,  when  his  forces  were  four  times  as  great  as  those  of 
his  opponent,  but  he  was  a  clever  officer  though  he  was  only 
familiar  with  the   old   modes   of  warfare,  and  never  under- 


CAPITULATION  OF  ULM.  425 

Stood  those  of  Napoleon.     The  plan  of  campaign  for   1805 
was  elaborated    in    consultation   with    the    Russian    general 
Winzingrode,  and  was  to  consist,  as  in  1799,  in  simultaneous 
attacks  on  Suabia  and  Italy,  three  armies  acting  at  once,  one 
in    Italy,  one   in    Tyrol,  and  another  in  Bavaria.     The  war 
was  exceedingly  popular  in  Vienna.    "  It  is  both  touching  and 
consoling,"  writes  Genz  to   John  Miiller,  "to  see   the   good 
feeling  which   animates    the  whole   country;    at   the   present 
moment  our  cause  is  so  good,  so  just,  so  holy,  that  no  one 
dare  murmur.     Each  one  feels  that  the  present  state  of  things 
cannot   last."     The   army   in    Italy  was    commanded   by  the 
archduke  Charles,  that  of  Tyrol  by  the  archduke  John.     The 
emperor  in  person  led  the  army  in  Germany,  but  he  left  the 
general  direction  of  the  troops  to  Mack,  who  displayed  the 
greatest  energy.     Austria,  however,  was  deficient  in  cannons, 
in  horses,  and  in  money,  and  how  Mack  led   them   to   the 
disastrous  capitulation  of  Ulm  (20th  October,    1805)   is  well 
known.     It  was  a  terrible  catastrophe  for  Austria.     INIack  was 
summoned  before   the  council  of  war,  deprived  of  his  com- 
mand, and  condemned    to    ten    years'  imprisonment.      "  The 
blow  which  has  fallen  on  us,"  writes  Genz,  "is  one  of  those 
which  break  the  heart  and  crush  the  mind."     The  emperor 
took   every  possible  means   to   encourage   his   people.     In  a 
manifesto  of  the  28th  of  October,  1805,  he  said,  "The  Aus- 
trian monarchy  has  always  risen  triumphant  from  every  mis- 
fortune that  has  befallen  it  in  times  past ;  its  strength  is  still 
unconquered ;   in  the  hearts   of  the  brave  men  for  whom  I 
fight  the   old  spirit  of  patriotism    still   lives."     Negociations 
were  entered  into  with  Prussia,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  her 
mediation  and  perhaps  her  help.     But  further  defeat  awaited 
Austria.     In    Italy  the    archduke    Charles   had  accepted  the 
command   of  the   troops  who   were  to  oppose  the   army  of 
Massena,  and  with  them  he  fought  the  glorious  but  useless 
battle   of  Caldiero  (30th    October,   1805).     He   was   obliged 
immediately  after  the  fight  to  march  to  the  help  of  the  threat- 
ened German  provinces,  in  order  to  prevent,  if  possible,  the 


426  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

French  army  in  Italy  from  joining  Napoleon  in  his  march  on 
Vienna.  Tyrol  and  Vorarlberg  were  at  the  time  in  the  occupa- 
tion of  Austrian  troops.  The  archduke  united  this  force  to  his 
OAvn,  gave  orders  that  Tyrol  should  be  abandoned,  and  then 
retreated  towards  Carniola  and  Carinthia.  Ney  immediately 
occupied  Tyrol.  Charles  now  had  twenty-four  thousand  men 
under  his  command,  who,  in  case  of  need,  would  weigh  heavily 
in  the  balance,  and  when  the  news  of  the  occupation  of  Vienna 
reached  him  he  pushed  on  into  Hungary  by  way  of  Styria,  and 
encamped  near  Koermend,  on  the  very  spot  where  the  battle 
called  the  battle  of  St.  Gothard  had  been  fought  against  the 
Turks  in  1664. 

The  Russian  troops  under  Kutuzov  were  too  weak  to  be 
able  to  protect  Vienna.  It  had  early  been  abandoned  and  all 
the  art  treasures  and  money  belonging  to  the  state  sent  into 
Hungary,  but  the  arms  and  munitions  of  war  had  been 
negligently  allowed  to  remain.  On  the  3rd  of  November,  1805, 
Murat  entered  the  city,  and  he  was  soon  followed  by  Napo- 
leon, who  established  his  head-quarters  at  Schonbrunn,  while 
general  Hulin  was  appointed  commandant  of  Vienna  and  took 
up  his  abode  in  the  palace  of  Lobkowitz.  The  Viennese 
showed  an  utter  want  of  courage  ;  they  not  only  sent  a  depu- 
tation to  Napoleon  praying  him  to  spare  the  city,  but  actually 
presented  him  with  a  service  of  plate,  a  course  of  action 
which  did  not  save  them,  however,  from  having  to  pay  a 
heavy  fine,  besides  the  usual  requisitions  of  war.  This  was  the 
first  time  since  the  days  of  Mathias  Corvinus  that  a  conqueror 
had  entered  Vienna. 

Meanwhile,  the  emperor  of  Austria  had  joined  the  Russian 
troops  of  Alexander  in  Moravia,  and  had  added  fifteen 
thousand  Austrians  to  an  army  of  sixty-two  thousand  Russians. 
On  the  14th  of  November,  Napoleon  left  Vienna  to  meet 
this  army,  having  with  him  only  seventy  thousand  men.  On 
the  15th,  he  reached  Znoymo,  on  the  20th,  Brno  (Briinn),  and 
on  the  2nd  of  December,  1805,  a  battle  took  place  near  the 
village  of  Slavkov,  which  the  Germans  call  Austerlitz,  in  which 


AUSTERLITZ.  427 

he  was  completely  victorious.  The  allies  lost  fifteen  thousand 
killed,  ten  thousand  prisoners,  two  hundred  and  eighty  can- 
nons. The  fate  of  the  campaign  was  decided  by  this  Battle 
of  the  Three  Emperors,  after  which  Francis  II.  had  an  interview 
with  Napoleon  near  Spaleny  Mlyn  (Burnt  Mill),  where  the 
conditions  of  peace  were  discussed.  "  After  what  I  have  seen, 
there  is  nothing  left  for  me  to  suffer,"  said  Francis  to  prince 
Lichtenstein  on  his  return. 

On  the  6th  of  December,  hostilities  ceased,  and  the  Russians 
retired  by  way  of  Galicia,  but  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of 
the  armistice,  the  French  troops  continued  to  occupy  all  the 
lands  they  had  invaded,  Austria,  Tyrol,  Venetia,  Carniola, 
Carinthia,  and  Styria ;  within  Bohemia  they  were  to  have  the 
circle  of  Tabor,  together  with  Brno  and  Znoymo  in  Moravia 
and  Pozsony  (Pressburg)  in  Hungary.  The  Morava  (March) 
and  the  Hungarian  frontier  formed  the  line  of  demarcation 
between  the  two  armies.  A  definitive  peace  was  signed  at 
Pressburg  on  the  26th  of  December,  1805.  Austria  recognized 
the  conquests  of  France  in  Holland  and  Switzerland  and  the 
annexation  of  Genoa,  and  ceded  to  the  kingdom  of  Italy 
Friuli,  Istria,  Dalmatia  with  its  islands,  and  the  Bocche  di 
Cattaro.  A  little  later,  by  the  explanatory  Act  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  she  lost  the  last  of  her  possessions  to  the  west  of  the 
Isonzo,  when  she  exchanged  those  portions  of  the  counties  of 
Gorica  and  Gradisca  which  are  situated  on  the  right  bank  of 
that  river  for  the  county  of  Montefalcone  in  Istria.  The  new 
kingdoms  of  Bavaria  and  Wiirtemberg  were  aggrandized  at  the 
expense  of  Austria.  Bavaria  obtained  Vorarlberg,  the  county 
of  Hohenembs,  the  town  of  Lindau,  and  the  whole  of  Tyrol 
with  Brixen  and  Trent.  Austrian  Suabia  was  given  to  ^^'i^rtem- 
berg,  while  Breisgau  and  the  Ortenau  were  bestowed  on  the 
new  grand-duke  of  Baden.  One  compensation  alone,  the  duchy 
of  Salzburg,  fell  to  Austria  for  all  her  sacrifices,  and  this  has  re- 
mained in  her  possession  ever  since.  The  old  bishopric  of  W'iirz- 
burg  was  created  an  electorate  and  granted  to  Ferdinand  III. 
of  Tuscany  and  Salzburg.     Altogether  the  monarchy  lost  about 


428  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

twenty-five  thousand  four  hundred  square  miles  and  nearly 
three  millions  of  inhabitants.  She  lost  Tyrol  with  its  brave 
and  loyal  inhabitants  and  the  Vorliinde  which  had  assured 
Austrian  influence  in  Germany;  every  possession  on  the  Rhine, 
in  the  Black  Forest,  and  on  the  Lower  Danube ;  she  no  longer 
touched  either  Switzerland  or  Italy,  and  she  ceased  to  be  a 
maritime  power.  Besides  all  this,  she  had  to  pay  forty  millions 
for  the  expenses  of  the  war,  while  she  was  exhausted  by  con- 
tributions and  requisitions.  Vienna  had  suffered  much,  and  the 
French  army  had  carried  off  the  two  thousand  cannons  and 
the  hundred  thousand  guns  which  had  been  contained  in  her 
arsenals. 

On  the  i6th  of  January,  1806,  the  emperor  Francis  returned 
to  his  capital.  He  was  enthusiastically  received,  and  the 
Viennese  returned  to  the  luxurious  and  easy  way  of  life  which 
has  always  characterized  them.  To  charm  their  leisure  and  to 
console  them  in  their  misfortunes,  had  they  not  the  greatest 
musicians  the  world  has  produced,  Haydn  and  Beethoven, 
Salieri  and  Clementi? 

Surrefider  by  Francis  II.  of  the  title  of  Roman  Emperor  (1806). 

Austria  seemed  no  longer  to  have  any  part  to  play  in 
German  politics.  Bavaria,  Wiirtemberg,  and  Baden  had  been 
formed  into  a  separate  league — the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine 
— under  French  protection.  On  the  ist  of  August,  1806,  these 
states  announced  to  the  Reichstag  at  Ratisbon  that  they 
looked  upon  the  empire  as  at  an  end,  and  on  the  6th, 
Francis  H.  formally  resigned  the  empire  altogether,  and 
released  all  the  imperial  officials  from  their  engagements  to 
him.  Thus  the  sceptre  of  Charlemagne  fell  from  the  hands  of 
the  dynasty  which  had  held  it  without  interruption  from  1438. 
Francis  most  certainly  did  not  give  up  Germany  without  regret. 
Although  in  his  hereditary  dominions  he  ruled  over  more  than 
fifteen  millions  of  subjects  who  were  not  Germans,  his 
education  had  been  entirely  German,  and  for  centuries  the 
kings  of  Bohemia  and  of  Hungary  had  been  accustomed  to 


SURRENDER   OF   TITLE   OF  ROMAN  EMPEROR.      429 

look  upon  those  countries  merely  as  nursery-grounds  for 
soldiers  who  would  help  to  secure  their  power  in  Suabia  and 
along  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  the  Scheldt,  and  the  Po.  The 
duties  which  they  owed  to  the  kingdoms  of  St.  Vacslav  and 
St.  Stephen  had  been  sacrificed  to  their  German  sympathies 
and  ambitions.  Now  they  found  themselves  driven  out  of 
Germany,  and  left  alone  with  Bohemia,  Hungary,  Galicia,  and 
the  Hereditary  Provinces.  Happy  would  it  have  been  if, 
ceasing  for  the  future  to  let  go  the  substance  for  the  shadow, 
they  had  known  how  to  arrive  at  a  clear  idea  of  the  rights  and 
duties  imposed  upon  them  by  their  new  position  ! 

The  internal  policy  of  Austria  was  at  this  time  directed  by 
count  Philip  Stadion,  chancellor  of  the  empire,  and  the  arch- 
duke Charles,  who  had  been  war  minister  since  the  month  of 
February,  1801.  Both  ministers  thought  only  of  a  new  war 
against  Napoleon.  Stadion  was  a  German  of  INIaintz,  and 
continued  the  old  German  policy,  striving  to  restore  the 
position  of  Austria  by  diplomacy.  The  archduke  set  to  work 
to  reorganize  the  army.  Genz  was  Stadion's  official  publicist ; 
although  he  was  a  German  and  full  of  German  prejudices,  he 
felt  that  circumstances  had  changed  the  destinies  of  Austria, 
and  that  the  enfeebled  empire  could  only  be  restored  to 
vigorous  life  by  altering  its  centre  of  gravity.  On  the  4th  of 
August,  1806,  he  writes  to  his  friend  John  Midler,  "Vienna 
ought  to  cease  to  be  the  capital.  The  German  dominions 
ought  to  be  looked  upon  as  secondary  provinces,  and  the  seat 
of  government  ought  to  be  removed  to  the  heart  of  Hungary, 
and  a  new  constitution  drawn  up  for  that  country.  With 
Hungary,  Bohemia,  Galicia,  and  what  remains  to  us  in  Germany, 
we  could  hold  our  own  against  the  universe  if  we  Avished.  We 
ought  to  reconquer  Fiume  and  Trieste  at  any  cost,  in  order  to 
have  access  to  the  sea,  and  the  other  frontiers  should  be  so 
strongly  fortified  that  the  devil  himself  could  not  cross  them. 
If  we  were  to  do  this,  Prussia  and  Germany  would  soon  be 
obliged  to  ask  help  of  us." 

But  these  ideas  made  no  way  with  the  court  of  Vienna, 


430  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

where  every  effort  and  every  hope  turned  towards  Germany  and 
Italy.  It  was  besides  exceedingly  difficult  for  Austria  to  remain 
neutral,  silent,  and  disinterested  in  the  presence  of  Napoleon's 
ceaseless  efforts  to  secure  for  himself  the  lead  in  Europe.  Then 
again,  most  of  the  noble  families  who  surrounded  Francis 
II.  had  possessed  lands  in  Germany,  and  their  only  thought 
was  how  to  reconquer  them.  Under  these  circumstances  it 
was  not  surprising  that  Metternich's  relations  with  Napoleon 
in  Paris  became  exceedingly  strained.  Austria  dared  not  come 
to  the  aid  of  Prussia  and  Russia  during  the  disastrous  cam- 
paign of  Jena  and  Eylau,  but  Napoleon  felt  no  gratitude  for 
that.  He  knew  too  well  the  hostile  intentions  of  Francis  II. 
"What  does  your  sovereign  want?"  he  had  asked  bluntly  of 
Metternich  at  an  audience  on  the  15th  of  August,  1808. 
"  He  wants  his  envoy  to  be  respected,"  the  diplomatist  had 
answered  drily.  At  the  congress  of  Erfurt,  when  Vincent, 
the  Austrian  general,  brought  him  a  letter  of  congratulation 
from  Francis,  he  had  roughly  reminded  him  that  he  had  been 
in  a  position  in  which  he  could  have  utterly  destroyed  Austria, 
and  that  she  owed  her  existence  to  his  mercy.  All  this  irrita- 
tion was  caused  by  her  warlike  preparations. 

The  archduke  Charles  applied  himself  energetically  to  the 
equipment  of  the  army,  while  he  did  all  he  could  to  raise  the 
tone  of  the  troops  and  to  fortify  the  frontier  on  the  side  of 
Germany.  He  abolished  corporal  punishment,  and  organized 
a  territorial  militia  as  a  reserve  force.  This  landwehr  was 
drilled  on  holidays,  and  met  in  full  force  once  a  month  (patent 
of  the  12th  of  May,  1808).  The  Bohemian  diet  voted  a  million 
and  a  half  of  florins  for  the  maintenance  of  this  militia,  and  the 
Hungarians  were  ready  to  make  the  necessary  sacrifices  for  it. 
Measures  were  taken  at  the  same  time  to  bring  about  a  national 
rising  in  the  north  of  Germany,  and  Tyrol,  which  had  always 
been  devoted  to  the  dynasty,  only  awaited  the  signal  to  throw 
off  the  rule  of  Bavaria.  The  enthusiasm  became  great  through- 
out all  the  provinces  of  the  empire ;  warlike  fetes  were  held 
in  many   places;    Arndt,    Korner,  and  other  less   illustrious 


CAMPAIGN'  OF  1809.  43  I 

poets  wrote  patriotic  hymns,  which  soon  became  popular. 
One  by  the  poet  Colhn  was  a  kind  of  monarchical  Marseillaise  : 
"The  throne  of  the  Habsburgs  must  remain  fixed  for  ever, — 
Austria  shall  not  perish.  Rise,  O  people ;  form  your  battalions  ! 
To  arms  !  To  the  frontiers  !  "  Napoleon's  foolish  expedition 
against  Spain  had  helped  once  more  to  raise  the  highest  hopes. 
It  was  on  the  27th  of  March,  1809,  that  war  was  declared 
against  France,  and  the  archduke  Charles  named  generalissimo, 
with  fuller  powers  than  had  been  granted  to  any  general  since 
the  days  of  Wallenstein  or  prince  Eugene.  He  commanded  an 
army  of  two  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  men,  thirty  thousand 
horse,  and  eight  hundred  cannons.  The  landwehr  and  the 
Hungarian  insurrection  could,  according  to  the  most  trustworthy 
calculations,  furnish  two  hundred  and  twenty-four  thousand 
more,  and  would  thus  make  a  total  of  more  than  five  hundred 
thousand. 

Campaign  <?/"i8o9 — Iitsurrection  of  Tyrol. 

Again  it  was  decided  that  Napoleon  should  be  attacked  at 
the  same  moment  by  three  different  armies.  The  first,  under  the 
orders  of  the  archduke  Charles,  was  to  march  against  Bavaria ; 
the  second,  under  the  archduke  John,  was  to  attack  Italy  \  while 
the  archduke  Ferdinand,  with  thirty-five  thousand  men,  was  to 
invade  Poland.  Less  important  bodies  of  troops  were  to  drive 
the  French  from  Dalmatia  and  Istria.  Never  had  Austria  set 
on  foot  such  a  force.  She  represented  herself  as  the  champion 
of  the  independence  of  nations.  "  The  freedom  of  Europe  has 
sought  refuge  beneath  your  banner,"  said  the  archduke  Charles 
in  one  of  his  proclamations.  "  Soldiers,  your  victories  will 
break  her  chains ;  your  German  brothers  who  are  now  in  the 
ranks  of  the  enemy  wait  only  for  their  deliverance."  There  is 
no  evidence  that  the  Chekhs,  Slovenes,  Hungarians,  Croats, 
Roumanians,  and  Poles  had  any  great  interest  in  the  deliverance 
of  their  German  brothers ;  but  the  archduke  only  repeated  the 
traditional  formulas  of  his  house.  All  he  cared  about  was  to 
persuade  Europe  and  Germany  herself  that  the  destiny  of  the 


43 2  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARY. 

German  race  was  bound  up  with  that  of  the  house  of  Austria. 
"  We  fight  for  the  maintenance  of  the  independence  of  the 
Austrian  monarchy,"  said  a  manifesto  addressed  to  Germany, 
"  to  recover  that  independence  and  that  national  honour  which 
belong  to  her.  Our  resistance  is  her  last  hope  of  safety;  our 
cause  is  hers.  With  Austria  Germany  has  been  independent 
and  happy,  and  only  through  Austria  can  she  become  so  again." 
The  first  episode  in  the  war  was  the  insurrection  of  Tyrol 
against  Bavaria.  These  rude  mountaineers  had  remained  faith- 
fully attached  to  the  house  of  Austria,  and  had  known  how  to 
preserve,  during  a  long  series  of  reigns,  their  privileges  and 
patriarchal  customs.  At  the  time  of  their  annexation  to 
Bavaria,  Maximilian  Joseph  had  promised  "  not  to  change  one 
iota  "  of  their  laws ;  but  a  year  had  scarcely  passed  before  the 
Bavarian  ministers  set  to  work  to  assimilate  the  new  province 
of  Southern  Bavaria,  as  it  was  called  in  ofificial  documents,  to 
the  rest  of  the  kingdom.  On  the  ist  of  May,  1808,  the  estates 
of  Tyrol  were  dissolved,  the  administration  of  religious  matters 
altered  completely,  the  pastors  driven  from  their  churches 
without  reason  assigned,  and  pilgrimages  and  festivals  sujj- 
pressed.  Some  of  these  reforms  would  have  been  excellent 
had  they  been  undertaken  under  other  circumstances  and  with 
due  precaution  ;  harshly  insisted  upon  by  a  foreign  government, 
they  drove  the  simple  folk  to  desperation.  They  had  always 
kept  up  their  old  connection  with  Vienna,  and  their  interests 
had  been  bravely  maintained  there  by  the  Tyrolese  Hormayr. 
In  the  beginning  of  1809,  three  patriots,  Andrew  Hofer,  Peter 
Huber,  and  Nessing,  went  to  Vienna  to  arrange  a  plan  of 
insurrection  with  the  archduke  John,  and  on  their  return  the 
revolt  was  organized.  Innkeepers,  pedlars,  and  labourers  were 
the  principal  agents,  and  the  secret  was  kept  with  admirable 
resolution.  Among  the  rustic  heroes  of  this  struggle  three 
deserve  to  be  specially  remembered  by  the  historian — Andrew 
Hofer,  the  innkeeper  of  Passeyer;  Joseph  Speckbacher ;  and 
Joachim  Haspinger,  the  Capuchin.  The  innkeeper  and  horse- 
dealer,  Andrew  Hofer,  was  known  throughout  the  whole  of  Tyrol. 


INSURRECTION  IN  TYROL.  433 

He  had  been  a  member  of  the  diet,  and  in  1796  he  had  com- 
manded a  body  of  his  countrymen  in  Italy  against  the  French. 
The  father  of  seven  children,  he  never  hesitated  a  moment  to 
leave  them  for  the  service  of  his  country.  Speckbacher  had 
fought  in  the  campaigns  of  1797,  i8oo,  and  1805,  and  possessed 
real  military  talent.  Haspinger,  the  Capuchin,  who  was  better 
known  by  the  name  of  Father  Joachim  of  the  Red  Beard,  had 
accompanied  the  Tyrolese  in  all  their  expeditions  as  their 
chaplain.  He  never  shed  blood  himself,  but  no  man  knew 
better  how  to  excite  the  soldiers  to  battle  and  heighten  their 
patriotism  by  their  religious  faith. 

On  the  9th  of  April,  1809,  the  Austrian  general,  Chasteler, 
crossed  the  Tyrolese  frontier  and  was  received  with  triumph. 
On  the  same  day,  Hofer  called  his  countrymen  to  arms,  and 
when  Chasteler  entered  the  Pusterthal  not  a  single  Bavarian 
was  to  be  found,  Hofer  and  his  peasants  having  driven  every 
foreign  soldier  out  of  the  country.  A  few  days  later  they 
captured  Innsbriick,  but  their  victory  was  tarnished  by  the 
pillage  of  the  houses  of  the  Jews  and  of  the  Bavarian  officials. 
The  next  day  three  thousand  five  hundred  Frenchmen,  com- 
manded by  Bisson,  surrendered  to  the  rough  mountaineers, 
and  seven  cannons  fell  into  their  hands.  Hormayr,  who  had 
arrived  with  the  Austrian  army,  at  once  restored  the  old  form 
of  government  throughout  Tyrol.  In  the  south  the  struggle 
was  harder,  and  general  Baraguay  d'Hilliers  with  eight 
thousand  French  troops  was  able  to  hold  his  ground  for  some 
time,  but  finally  fell  back  into  Italy  before  the  army  of  Hofer 
and  the  soldiers  of  Chasteler.  By  the  end  of  April  the  whole 
of  Tyrol,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  fortress  of  Kufstein, 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  Austrians,  and  this  unexpected  success 
filled  the  Austrian  troops  with  confident  hopes  which  after 
events  by  no  means  justified. 

On  the  13th  of  April,  Napoleon  left  Paris,  and  hastened  to 
meet  the  archduke  Charles,  who  had  entered  Bavaria  and  was 
marching  on  Landshut.  The  Austrian  troops  stretched  from 
Munich  to  Ratisbon.      By   the   victory  of  Abensberg  (20th 

2    F 


434  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

April)  Napoleon  divided  them,  got  possession  of  Landshut, 
and  crushed  the  main  body  at  Eggmiihl  and  before  Ratisbon 
(22nd-23rd  April).  The  Austrians  fought  heroically,  but  in 
spite  of  all  their  efforts  sixty  thousand  men  and  a  hundred 
cannons  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  The  success 
obtained  in  Italy,  where  Friuli  was  occupied  by  Austrian 
troops,  and  in  Poland,  where  Warsaw  had  capitulated  to  the 
archduke  Ferdinand,  could  not  atone  for  this  terrible  defeat. 

The  archduke  Charles  was  obliged  to  retreat  into  Bohemia 
to  reorganize  his  army,  while  the  archduke  Maximilian 
endeavoured  to  defend  Vienna ;  but  the  city  was  bombarded 
and  forced  to  surrender.  For  the  second  time  the  French 
took  possession  of  it  (13th  May),  and  the  famous  proclama- 
tion of  Napoleon  to  the  Hungarians,  of  which  we  must  shortly 
speak-,  was  dated  thence. 

Aspern  and  Wagram — Treaty  of  Schonbrutin  (1809). 

The  fall  of  Vienna  placed  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube, 
from  Linz  to  the  Hungarian  frontier,  in  the  hands  of  the 
French,  while  the  left  bank  was  guarded  by  Austrian  troops. 
In  order  to  dislodge  the  enemy.  Napoleon  threw  bridges 
across  the  river  near  the  island  of  Lobau,  and  the  villages  of 
Aspern  and  Esslingen  were  captured  by  Massena  and  Lannes. 
The  archduke  Charles  awaited  the  French  close  by,  and  on 
hearing  that  they  had  passed  the  river,  he  issued  an  order  of 
the  day  to  his  troops  which  reminds  us  of  that  of  Nelson  at 
Trafalgar :  "  To-morrow  we  must  fight ;  the  fate  of  the 
monarchy  depends  on  you.  I  shall  do  my  duty,  and  I 
expect  the  same  of  the  army."  He  had  seventy-three 
thousand  men  and  three  hundred  cannons  under  his  com- 
mand. For  two  successive  days  he  tried  unsuccessfully  to 
force  the  French  back  upon  the  Danube.  Napoleon  was 
quite  unable  to  break  the  Austrian  lines,  and  narrowly  escaped 
being  blockaded  in  the  island  of  Lobau.  These  two  days  cost 
the  two  armies  more  than  forty  thousand  killed  and  wounded, 
marshal  Lannes  being  among  the  killed.     Victory  seemed  to 


BATTLE   OF  ASPERy.  435 

hesitate  between  the  two  adversaries,  and  Napoleon  was 
obliged  to  own  that  he  had  at  last  found  a  rival  worthy  of  him. 
The  battle  of  Aspern  (22nd  May,  1809)  is  looked  upon  in  Austria 
as  the  greatest  victory  gained  since  the  days  of  Zenta  and 
Kolin.  The  emperor  Francis  wrote  to  the  archduke  Charles 
to  congratulate  "the  worthy  pillar  of  the  throne,  the  saviour 
of  his  country ; "  and  Napoleon  once  said,  "  He  who  has  not 
seen  the  Austrians  at  Aspern  has  seen  nothing." 

After  the  battles  of  Aspern  and  Esslingen,  Napoleon 
fortified  the  island  of  Lobau  and  transformed  it  into  a  kind  of 
entrenched  camp,  from  whence  either  bank  of  the  river  could 
be  reached  at  will.  Here  he  awaited  the  arrival  of  the 
archduke  John.  John  had  been  defeated  in  Italy  and  had 
been  forced  to  take  refuge  in  Hungary,  where  he  was  pursued 
by  the  troops  of  Eugene  Beauharnais.  Driven  out  of  Friuli, 
he  had  at  first  fallen  back  upon  Griitz,  and  from  thence 
entered  Hungary,  hoping  to  join  forces  with  the  msiirrection. 
Eugene,  however,  did  not  follow  him  into  Hungary,  but 
marched  to  join  Napoleon  at  Vienna,  and  the  archduke  John 
set  to  work  to  restore  order  among  his  troops  in  that  camp  at 
Kormend  which  had  already  sheltered  the  army  of  the  arch- 
duke Charles.  The  archduke  Ferdinand  had  met  with  no 
better  fortune  in  Poland,  but  had  been  forced  to  retreat, 
abandoning  Galicia  and  taking  refuge  also  in  Hungary. 

The  position  of  Austria  had  never  before  been  so  bad. 
The  whole  of  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube,  from  the  frontiers 
of  Bavaria  to  the  frontiers  of  Hungary,  and  the  whole  of  Inner 
Austria  were  in  the  hands  of  the  French ;  they  occupied  the 
towns  of  Vienna,  Salzburg,  Linz,  Gratz,  Ljublanja  (Laybach), 
Klagenfurt,  and  Trieste.  One  effort  more  and  the  whole 
empire  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  conqueror.  This  effort 
Napoleon  made  on  the  5th  of  July,  when  he  quitted  the  island 
of  Lobau  with  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  and  five 
hundred  cannons.  The  archduke  Charles  had  an  equal  number 
of  men  and  guns,  but  he  dared  not  dispute  the  passage  of  the 
river,  and  awaited  the  French  on  the  heights  of  Wagram.     The 


436  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

result  of  that  bloody  battle  is  well  known.  Aspern  was  avenged  ; 
once  more  forty  thousand  dead  and  wounded  were  left  on  the 
field,  and  the  archduke,  forced  to  abandon  his  position,  retreated 
into  Moravia.  When  he  reached  Znoymo  (Zna'i'm)  he  demanded 
and  obtained  an  armistice  for  six  weeks,  and  this,  after  some 
hesitation,  was  ratified  by  Francis  II.  The  emperor  had  at  first 
taken  refuge  in  Hungary,  and  had  only  joined  his  army  in  time 
to  witness  the  defeat  at  Wagram.  He  entrusted  the  execution 
of  the  armistice  to  the  archduke  John,  whom  he  also  made 
commander-in-chief,  on  which  the  archduke  Charles,  deeply 
wounded,  resigned.  From  this  time  he  lived  in  retirement,  only 
re-entering  public  life  for  a  moment  in  1815.  Since  the  days 
of  Wallenstein  and  prince  Eugbne  no  Austrian  general  had  had 
so  great  an  influence  over  the  army.  The  conditions  of  peace 
were  discussed  by  Champagny  and  Metternich  at  Altenburg, 
and  finally  decided  at  Schonbrunn,  where  the  treaty  was  signed 
on  the  14th  of  October.  On  the  following  day  the  fortifications 
of  Vienna,  Gratz,  Gyor  (Raab),  Klagenfurt,  and  Brno  (Briinn), 
were  all  destroyed  by  Napoleon's  order,  and  it  was  in  vain  that 
the  Viennese  begged  to  be  allowed  to  keep  the  walls  which  had 
formerly  protected  them  from  the  Turks. 

By  the  treaty  of  Vienna,  or  rather  of  Schonbrunn,  Francis 
II.  ceded  to  Bavaria  the  territory  of  Salzburg  and  Berchtols- 
gaden,  the  district  of  the  Inn  and  that  of  the  Hausruck  above 
the  Enns,  which  had  always  belonged  to  Austria.  He  gave  uj) 
to  Napoleon  that  portion  of  Gorica  which  had  hitherto  re- 
mained in  his  hands,  the  county  of  Montefalcone,  Trieste,  the 
whole  of  Carniola,  the  upper  portion  of  Carinthia  (circle  of 
Villach),  and  all  the  land  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Save  from 
its  rise  in  Carniola  to  the  Turkish  frontier,  that  is  to  say,  the 
greater  part  of  Croatia,  Fiume  (Rieka),  and  Austrian  Istria. 
The  Bohemian  territory  in  Lusatia,  which  was,  however,  of  but 
small  importance,  finally  became  the  property  of  Saxony ; 
Western  Galicia  went  to  enlarge  the  duchy  of  Warsaw  ;  and 
the  circle  of  Tarnopol  was  given  up  to  Russia. 

The   kingdom  thus  lost  about  forty-three  thousand  square 


CAPTURE   OF  HOFER.  437 

miles  and  three  million  five  hundred  thousand  subjects.  It 
now  contained  only  twenty-one  million  of  inhabitants  and 
about  two  hundred  thousand  square  miles  of  territory.  The 
treaty  also  contained  secret  clauses  which  limited  the  army  to 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  and  bound  the  nation  to  pay 
a  contribution  of  eighty-five  million  francs. 

But  the  most  painful  sacrifice  of  all  was  that  of  Tyrol. 
Notwithstanding  all  the  engagements  he  had  entered  into  with 
its  brave  inhabitants,  Francis  II.  was  forced  to  leave  that 
country  in  the  hands  of  Bavaria.  The  disappointment  of  the 
Tyrolese  was  bitter.  Hofer  and  his  companions  had  never 
given  up  hope ;  they  had  held  their  own  against  Wrede  the 
Bavarian,  and  Lefebvre  the  French  general ;  alone,  unaided, 
sometimes  without  even  news  from  the  capital,  they  had  placed 
their  country  in  a  state  of  defence,  manufactured  arms,  con- 
structed cannon,  and  forced  the  French  to  abandon  Innsbriick. 
They  now  resolved  to  continue  the  struggle  on  their  own 
account.  But  Bavaria  was  not  likely  to  allow  so  rich  a  prize 
to  escape,  and  thirty  thousand  French,  Bavarians,  and  Wiir- 
tembergers  entered  the  valley  of  the  Inn.  These  were 
repulsed  by  the  patriots  and  crushed  beneath  the  rocks  which 
were  hurled  upon  them  from  the  sides  of  the  narrow  mountain 
passes.  Tyrol  defended  itself  even  more  desperately  than  did 
Spain,  and  in  August,  1809,  Lefebvre  was  forced  to  retire  into 
Carinthia,  leaving  Hofer  sole  master  of  the  country.  He 
took  up  his  residence  in  the  imperial  palace,  with  the  title  of 
commander-in-chief.  Never  was  chief  more  implicitly  obeyed. 
But  on  the  arrival  of  troops  sent  by  the  viceroy  of  Italy,  he 
saw  that  further  resistance  would  be  useless,  and  had  retu'ed  to 
his  inn  at  Passeyer,  when  the  news  of  a  victory  on  the  part 
of  the  Austrians  led  him  again  to  take  up  arms.  This  time  the 
struggle  proved  too  unequal ;  the  Tyrolese  were  defeated  and 
their  leaders  forced  to  fly  or  to  conceal  themselves.  Speck- 
bacher  and  Haspinger  succeeded  in  crossing  the  frontier.  One 
hundred  thousand  florins  were  offered  for  the  head  of  Hofer. 
In  1810,  he  was  caught  and  taken  to  Mantua,  where  the  com- 


438  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

mandant  of  the  fortress  was,  at  the  time,  that  Bisson  who  had 
already  had  an  opportunity  of  testing  the  military  talents  of  the 
intrepid  soldier  in  the  campaign  of  the  Tyrol.  He  tried  to 
gain  him  over  to  the  service  of  Napoleon.  "  I  remain  true 
to  my  emperor  Francis,"  was  the  sole  answer  of  the  patriot. 
He  was  tried  on  the  charge  that  "  a  sabre  and  two  pistols  had 
been  found  in  his  house."  The  majority  of  his  judges  con- 
demned him  to  perpetual  imprisonment,  but  a  special  order 
was  received  from  Napoleon,  in  consequence  of  which  he  was 
shot  on  the  20th  of  February.  His  remains  were  buried  in 
a  garden,  whence  in  1823  they  were  carried  by  some  Tyrolese 
officers  to  Innsbruck,  where  they  now  lie  by  the  side  of  those 
of  Speckbacher  and  Haspinger  in  the  church  of  the  Franciscans. 
The  tragic  death  of  Hofer  had  the  curious  effect  of  rousing 
the  sentiment  of  nationality  in  Germany.  Germans  have  tried 
to  make  the  Tyrolese  chief  their  own  and  look  upon  him  as  a 
national  hero.  A  popular  song,  '^  Zu  Mantua  in  Banden  der 
treue  Hofer  war,"  represents  the  whole  of  Germany  plunged 
in  grief  and  despair  on  the  death  of  Hofer.  This  is  making 
small  account  of  history.  Hofer  detested  the  Bavarians  at 
least  as  much  as  he  detested  the  French  ;  and  as  for  the 
Prussian  "  heretics,"  it  is  probable  that  he  barely  knew  of  their 
existence. 

The  heroic  death  of  Hofer  did  not  put  an  end  to  the 
hatred  of  the  conquerors,  and  Tyrol  had  to  be  dismembered 
before  an  end  could  be  put  to  Tyrolese  resistance.  The 
A'''orarlberg  was  separated  from  it ;  Southern  Tyrol  was  given 
to  Italy,  the  Pusterthal  to  Illyria,  and  the  rem.ainder  became 
the  spoil  of  Bavaria.  The  university  of  Innsbruck  was  closed, 
and  the  Tyrolese  youths  were  enrolled  under  the  flags  of  foreign 
nations. 

The  French  in  the  Illyrian  Provinces. 

Napoleon  revived  the  old  classical  name  of  Illyrian 
Provinces  for  the  countries  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic, 
Carinthia,   Carniola,  Gorica,  Istria,  and  part  of  Croatia  and 


REPUBLIC  OF  FAG  US  A.  439 

Dalmatia,  and  here  his  government  was  more  successful  than 
in  Tyrol.  These  districts  belonged  to  the  Slavonic  race ; 
the  people  of  the  north  spoke  the  Slovenish,  those  of  the 
south  (Croatia  and  Dalmatia)  the  Croato-Servian  language. 
The  influence  of  the  German  dynasty  had  been  less  felt  here, 
where  the  lands  were  occupied  by  people  more  alien  to  the 
German  race  than  in  the  rest  of  the  empire. 

On  the  15th  of  October,  1808,  Napoleon  annexed  the 
ancient  republic  of  Ragusa  ^  to  Dalmatia ;  it  had  been 
conquered  by  general  Lauriston  two  years  earlier.  On  the 
15th  of  April,  181 1,  an  imperial  decree  divided  Illyria  into 
six  civil  provinces  and  one  military :  Carinthia  (chief  town 
Villach),  Carniola  (chief  town  Ljublanja,  Laybach),  Istria 
(chief  town  Trieste),  Civil  Croatia  (chief  town  Karlovac, 
Karlstadt),  Military  Croatia  (chief  town  Karlovac),  Dalmatia 
(chief  town  Zadar, .  Zara),  and  Ragusa  (chief  town  Ragusa). 
Marmont,  duke  of  Ragusa,  took  up  his  residence  at  Laybach. 

*  The  republic  of  Ragusa  (Dubrovnik)  was  founded  about  the  seventh 
century  by  Italian  colonists  and  Servians.  Like  the  Italian  republics,  it 
early  became  an  aristocracy.  From  the  ninth  century  onwards  its  manu- 
factures and  trade  were  in  a  very  flourishing  condition.  The  Ragusans 
learned  how  to  steer  their  course  cleverly  between  the  Servian  princes  and 
the  Venetians,  In  the  Middle  Ages  they  were  obliged  to  submit  to  the 
protectorate  of  Venice,  and  afterwards  to  that  of  Hungary,  and  later  on 
they  had  to  pay  tribute  to  the  Turks,  when  they  became  their  neighbours. 
In  the  fifteenth  century  they  had  agents  and  consuls  along  the  whole  of  the 
Levant,  and  maintained  three  hundred  ships  for  trade  in  distant  lands.  At 
that  time  Ragusa  contained  about  forty  thousand  inhabitants.  The  earth- 
quake of  1667  destroyed  about  five  thousand  persons  and  struck  a  cruel 
blow  at  the  republic,  while  the  intolerance  of  her  senate  towards  those 
merchants  who  were  members  of  the  Greek  Church  c<mipleted  her  ruin. 
In  order  to  avoid  the  dangerous  proximity  of  \'enice,  the  Ragusans  ceded 
the  two  districts  of  Klek  and  Sutorina  to  the  sultan,  thus  completely 
separating  the  republic  from  Dalmatia.  From  the  fifteenth  to  the  seven- 
teenth century  Ragusa  was  the  seat  of  a  school  of  Slav  poetry  whose  works 
are  still  classical.  The  principal  representatives  of  this  school  are  Mincetic 
and  Darzic,  who  are  lyric  poets ;  John  Gundulic,  the  author  of  the  epic 
poem,  "  Osman ; "  and  Palmotic,  author  of  "The  Christiade,"  and 
"  Gjorgjic."  Among  the  learned  men  she  has  produced  we  may  mention 
Banduri,  author  of  the  "  Imperium  Orientale,"  and  the  mathematician 
Boskovic.  At  the  present  time,  though  Ragusa  contains  only  a  few 
thousand  inhabitants,  she  is  still  one  of  the  literary  centres  of  '.he  southern 
Slavs. 


440  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  magic  name  of  Illyria  excited  the  most  Uvely  enthusiasm 
among  the  Slav  peoples.  Hitherto  oppressed  by  the  influence 
of  Germany,  they  now  found  themselves  for  the  first  time  united 
in  a  way  which  they  had  never  dared  to  hope  for  under  the 
Austrian  government.  The  nationjil  language  was  encouraged 
in  the  schools  and  the  literature  of  the  country  began  to  make 
progress.  "  The  people,  "  says  a  Slovene  historian,  "  learned  to 
have  a  great  respect  for  the  exact  and  speedy  justice  which  was 
accorded  to  them  by  the  French  courts ;  public  security  had 
never  before  been  so  great.  The  French  gendarmes  are  still 
remembered  kindly  by  the  Slovenes.  Taxes  were  well  regulated 
and  collected  in  a  better  way ;  communal  liberties  were  in- 
creased. It  would  take  long  to  relate  the  good  which  the 
French  government  did  to  the  country.  During  the  four  years 
it  lasted,  the  French  language  spread  through  the  land  with 
great  rapidity,  and  at  Lay  bach  there  was  hardly  an  educated 
man  who  had  not  learned  French."  Charles  Nodier,  who  was 
appointed  librarian  at  Laybach,  edited  a  polyglot  newspaper 
there,  called  the  Illyrian  Telegraph.  The  poet  Vodnik  trans- 
lated the  grammar  of  Lhomond  into  Slovene,  and  celebrated 
Napoleon  in  a  well-known  ode,  "  Risen  Illyria,"  in  which  he 
records  in  a  poetic  form  the  hopes  and  aspirations  of  his  native 
land  : — 

"  Napoleon  has  said,  '  Awake  !  arise,  Illyria  ! '  She  wakes, 
she  sighs,  '  Who  recalls  me  to  the  light  ?  O  great  hero,  is  it 
thou  who  wakest  me  ?  Thou  reachest  to  me  thy  mighty  hand  ; 
thou  liftest  me  up. 

"  '  Our  race  shall  be  glorified,  I  dare  to  hope.  A  miracle 
shall  take  place,  I  dare  to  prophesy. 

" '  Napoleon  penetrates  into  the  land  of  the  Slovenes,  a 
whole  generation  springs  from  the  earth. 

" '  Resting  one  hand  on  Gaul,  I  give  the  other  to  Greece 
that  I  may  save  her.  At  the  head  of  Greece  is  Corinth ;  in 
the  centre  of  Europe  is  Illyria.  Corinth  is  called  the  eye  of 
Greece  ;  Illyria  shall  be  the  jewel  of  the  whole  world." 

In  Dalmatia  also  the  national  language,  which  had  been 


THE  FRENCH  IN  ILLYRIA.  44 1 

crushed  by  every  possible  means  by  the  Venetians,  was 
encouraged  by  the  French  government,  the  official  journal 
being  published  both  in  Slav  and  in  Italian  ;  and  in  many 
other  ways  the  country  was  improved.  Schools  were  estab- 
lished, and  a  great  high-road  was  constructed  by  marshal 
Marmont  which  long  bore  the  name  of  "  Napoleon's  Road." 
It  is  owing  to  this  French  occupation  that  Austria  now  owns 
Ragusa,  and  that  she  has  always  since  retained  the  name  of 
the  kingdom  of  Illyria  in  her  public  documents,  though  that 
name  has  no  foundation  in  fact. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

FRANCIS    II. — AUSTRIA    AFTER   THE    PE.ACE    OF    SCHONBRUNN 
(1809-1815). 

Alliance  with  Napoleon. 

The  end  of  the  struggle  found  Austria  a  diminished  and  ruined 
empire.  A  policy  of  patience  and  wise  moderation  could 
alone  enable  her  to  recover  a  sound  financial  position  or  to 
reconstitute  her  army.  During  the  negociations  for  the  peace 
of  Schonbrunn  Francis  had  appointed  Clement  Metternich 
his  prime  minister,  and  when  Stadion  sent  in  his  resignation 
he  made  him  minister  of  foreign  affairs.  Like  so  many  among 
the  public  men  of  Austria,  Metternich  belonged  to  a  family 
which  had  originally  nothing  to  do  with  Austria  The  name 
of  Metternich  was  taken  from  a  small  village  in  the  Rhenish 
Provinces.  One  branch  of  the  family  had  settled  in  Bohemia 
in  1630,  the  period  when  that  country  was  the  gathering-ground 
and  the  prey  of  the  German  nobles.  The  father  of  Clement 
Metternich  had  been  Austrian  minister  at  the  electoral  courts 
on  the  Rhine.  This  son,  who  was  born  in  1773,  had  married 
a  grand-daughter  of  Kaunitz,  had  entered  the  diplomatic 
service  early,  and  had  represented  Austria  in  Paris  after  the 
peace  of  Pressburg.  He  had  arranged  the  campaign  of  1809, 
and,  notwithstanding  his  then  want  of  success,  the  emperor 
thought  it  wise  to  entrust  the  direction  of  affairs  to  the  man 
who  best  knew  Napoleon. 

It  was  Metternich  who  negociated  the  marriage  of  Napoleon 


AUSTRIA   AFTER    THE  PEACE   OF  SCHO.VBRUNN.     443 

with  the  archduchess  Maria  Louisa,  for  he  saw  in  it  the  best 
hope  of  gaining  for  Austria  the  aUiance  of  her  powerful  enemy, 
and  Francis  II.  found  himself  obhged  to  give  his  daughter  to 
this  upstart  Caesar,  to  the  man  who  had  described  him  in  one 
of  his  letters  as  "  this  skeleton,  Francis  II.,  whom  the  merits 
of  his  ancestors  have  placed  upon  the  throne."  The  people  of 
Austria  bitterly  felt  the  humiliation.  An  emperor  of  Austria 
to  give  his  daughter  to  the  man  who  owed  his  crown  to  the 
revolution  which  had  beheaded  Marie  Antoinette  !  On  the 
evening  of  the  marriage  by  proxy — at  which  Napoleon  had 
been  represented  by  the  plebeian  Berthier — the  "  Sacrifice  of 
Iphigenia  "  was  acted  in  the  court  theatre  at  Vienna,  and  the 
courtiers  could  not  help  comparing  their  sovereign  to  the 
cruel  Agamemnon  and  the  archduchess  to  the  unfortunate 
Iphigenia.  Maria  Louisa's  meanness  of  character  has  deprived 
her  fate  of  some  portion  of  the  pity  which  it  well  deserved. 
Metternich  accompanied  the  princess  to  Paris,  and  was  able 
to  obtain  for  his  country  better  terms  for  the  payment  of  the 
war  indemnity,  and  a  withdrawal  of  that  humiliating  clause 
of  the  treaty  wdiich  reduced  the  Austrian  army  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  men. 

The  financial  situation  of  Austria  was  at  this  time  exceed- 
ingly grave.  The  price  of  food  had  increased  greatly,  and  the 
blockade  of  the  continent  added  to  the  public  misery  by  de- 
priving people  of  coffee,  sugar,  and  cotton.  From  1793  to  1810 
the  public  debt  rose  from  three  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
millions  to  six  hundred  and  fifty-eight  millions  of  florins ;  it  had 
been  found  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  forced  loans,  and 
even  at  times  to  suspend  payment  of  the  salaries  of  public 
officials.  In  September,  1809,  a  letter  patent  ordered  all  men 
to  give  up  whatever  precious  metal  they  possessed  in  exchange 
for  government  bonds  and  lottery  tickets.  The  issue  of  paper 
money  increased  continually;  in  1792  it  represented  a  value  of 
tw^o  hundred  millions,  by  181  o  it  had  risen  to  a  thousand 
millions.  Bank-notes  for  thirty  and  even  for  fifteen  kreutzers 
were   in   circulation,   and,    the   value   of   this   paper    money 


444  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HLNGARY. 

decreasing  in  proportion  to  the  quantity  issued,  by  the  year 
1809  a  bank-note  for  four  florins  was  actually  worth  only  one. 
This  depreciation  was  increased  by  the  bank-notes  which 
came  in  from  the  ceded  provinces.  In  order  to  pay  Napoleon 
the  indemnity  of  eighty-five  millions,  it  had  been  necessary  to 
melt  down  the  precious  vessels  of  the  churches.  In  18 10,  a 
sinking  fund  had  been  created,  and  a  tax  of  a  tenth  on  all 
property,  real  and  personal,  had  been  levied.  By  181 1,  the  total 
amount  of  the  bank-notes  issued  had  reached  1,060,798,753 
florins,  and  there  was  nothing  left  to  the  government  but  bank- 
ruptcy. It  was  on  the  20th  of  February  of  this  year  that  a 
patent  reduced  all  notes  to  one-fifth  of  their  nominal  value. 
This  was  a  terrible  catastrophe,  and  many  families  were  com- 
pletely ruined  by  it.  A  special  order  of  this  patent  fixed  the 
value  of  money  from  1799  to  1810,  taking  into  consideration 
the  date  at  which  debts  had  been  incurred.  Any  person  who 
had  borrowed  one  hundred  florins,  in  1803  had  to  pay  back 
one  hundred  and  twenty-nine  in  paper;  in  1806,  one  hundred 
and  forty-eight  florins;  and  in  1809,  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
four  florins.  In  181 1,  he  had  to  pay  five  hundred  florins. 
The  diet  of  Hungary  agreed  to  a  reduction  of  fifty  per  cent., 
but  refused  to  accept  the  scala,  which,  however,  was  insisted 
upon  by  the  government.  It  was  only  after  the  peace  of  18 16 
that  order  was  restored  to  the  finances. 

The  legislative  work  of  the  reign  of  Francis  II.  was  more 
successful  than  the  financial.  The  penal  code  was  published 
on  the  3rd  of  September,  1803,  and  the  civil  code  on  the 
ist  of  July,  181 1.  Both  were  animated  by  the  spirit  of 
humanity  and  justice  to  which  the  eighteenth  century  had 
given  birth.  The  penal  code  suppressed  confiscation,  the 
galleys,  and  the  halage,  or  dragging  of  boats,  a  punishment 
which  had  been  as  harsh  as  the  galleys.  It  retained  the 
punishments  of  death  by  hanging,  and  imprisonment  of  three 
degrees  of  severity,  hard  labour,  the  pillory,  and  fasting, 
which  is  even  now  sometimes  inflicted  It  did  not  provide  for 
the  appointment  of  a  minister  of  justice,  nor  allow  prisoners  the 


LEGISLATIVE    WORK  OF  FRANCIS  IL  445 

help  of  advocates ;  but  this  penal  code  is  considered  one  of 
the  best  of  those  in  use  at  the  time,  and  remained  in  force 
down  to  1852. 

The  civil  code  of  181 1  was  the  result  of  fifty  years  of 
labour,  and  was  the  completion  of  what  Maria  Theresa  had 
begun.  On  the  ist  of  January,  181 2,  it  came  into  use 
throughout  the  whole  empire,  with  the  exception  of  Hungary 
and  Transylvania.  This  code  did  not  do  away  with  all  pre- 
vious legislation  like  the  Code  Napoleon.  It  recognized  a 
special  legislation  for  the  Church,  for  Jews,  and  for  large 
landed  estates ;  it  also  recognized  the  subjection  of  the 
peasants.  At  the  same  time,  it  did  not  recognize  serfdom, 
and  admitted  that  every  citizen  was  capable  of  enjoying  civil 
rights. 

The  fact  that  all  the  provinces  except  Hungary  were  now 
governed  by  the  same  code  must  have  helped  to  bring  about 
that  political  unity  which  had  always  been  the  aim  of  the 
government.  The  Magyars,  jealous  of  their  independence, 
refused  to  adopt  it,  and  were  right  in  so  doing  in  spite  of 
its  superiority  to  theyV«  tripartitum ;  its  adoption  would  have 
been  the  first  step  towards  the  absorption  of  the  kingdom  of 
St.  Stephen. 

Russia7i    Campaign — Reaction    against  Napoleoi — Austria   in 
Alliance  ivith  his  Enemies  (18 13). 

As  long  as  Napoleon  remained  at  the  head  of  the  French 
empire  there  could  be  no  peace  in  Europe  ;  each  nation  was 
forced  to  be  either  his  ally  or  his  enemy.  Francis  had  chosen 
to  be  his  ally,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he  was  dragged  into 
new  wars.  He  had  to  submit  to  the  humiliation  of  helping 
his  son-in-law  against  Russia,  as  he  had  had  to  submit  to  the 
humiliation  of  giving  to  him  his  daughter ;  he  was  entirely  at 
the  mercy  of  France.  Austria,  reduced  to  the  condition  of 
an  ordinary  continental  power,  was  surrounded  on  all  sides  by 
states  which  had  been  formed  by  the  conqueror — Switzerland, 
the  Confederation  of  the  Rhine,  Italy,  and  the  grand-duchy  of 


446  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Warsaw — all  of  them  creations  of  Napoleon,  and  Austria  was 
equally  in  a  state  of  vassalage.  "God  and  His  destroying 
angel  are  upon  us,"  wrote  Genz.  When  Radetsky  was  the  head 
of  the  staff,  he  formed  a  plan  for  making  the  permanent  army  a 
body  in  which  the  whole  male  population  should  be  trained, 
as  was  done  in  the  Prussian  landwehr,  and  Metternich  had 
approved  of  the  plan ;  but  count  Wallis,  president  of  the  Hof- 
kammer,  opposed  it,  saying,  "Austria  was  in  so  enfeebled  a 
condition  that  she  could  not  dream  of  going  to  war  for  the 
next  ten  years — perhaps  not  for  thirty." 

But  Metternich  and  prince  Schwarzenberg,  his  agent  in 
France,  were  both  determined  that  the  most  intimate  relations 
should  be  maintained  between  the  two  empires,  and  conse- 
quently, in  spite  of  his  wish  to  remain  at  peace,  Francis  was 
forced  to  march  against  his  old  ally,  the  czar  Alexander.  He 
promised  to  furnish  thirty  thousand  soldiers  and  thirty  thousand 
reserves  to  Napoleon,  and,  in  case  of  success,  was  to  receive 
in  return  some  addition  to  his  territory.  Considering  the 
position  of  Austria,  these  were  very  good  conditions,  and  put 
her  in  a  position  to  com-e  forward  as  mediator,  if  circumstances 
allowed  of  it.  But  the  nation  was  discontented  with  any 
alliance  with  Napoleon,  and  plots  were  organized  to  deprive  him 
of  the  lUyrian  Provinces,  while  English  and  Prussian  agents 
travelled  throughout  the  land,  rousing  the  people  against 
France. 

In  the  month  of  May,  1811,  Francis  H.  and  his  son-in-law 
met  at  Dresden.  Metternich,  who  accompanied  his  master, 
endeavoured  to  dissuade  Napoleon  from  an  expedition  which 
he  saw  to  be  full  of  danger.  All  his  efforts  were  useless.  The 
Austrian  army  assembled  at  Lemberg  (Lwow)  under  the  com- 
mand of  Karl  Schwarzenberg,  and  the  reserves  were  called  out 
in  Transylvania.  There  was  but  little  enthusiasm  among  the 
Austrian  soldiers  for  the  expedition,  and  the  proclamation  of 
prince  Schwarzenberg  expresses  clearly  enough  his  per- 
plexity :  "  We  are  fighting  for  an  object  which  is  common 
to  us  and  to  the  other  powers.     These  powers  are  our  allies. 


ALLIAXCE    WITH  NAPOLEON:  44/ 

We  are  fighting  with  them,  not  for  them.  The  army  will 
display  that  virtue  which  is  the  best  of  all  military  virtues 
— that  which  consists  in  sacrificing  itself  in  order  to  fulfil 
the  aim  which  the  sovereign,  under  existing  circumstances, 
has  proposed  to  himself."  The  army  did  fulfil  its  duty,  and 
marched  into  the  duchy  of  Warsaw.  Reynier's  corps  had 
been  placed  by  Napoleon  under  the  command  of  Schwarzen- 
berg.  He  penetrated  as  far  as  Brzesc  in  Lithuania,  but  he 
neither  took  part  in  the  expedition  against  Moscow  nor  in  the 
disastrous  retreat  that  followed,  and,  owing  to  this,  was  able  to 
bring  back  his  troops  almost  intact. 

It  was  evidently  not  the  business  of  Austria  to  carry  on  the 
struggle  in  which  the  "  grand  army  "  had  failed.  The  war  had 
been  unpopular  froiai  the  beginning  \  it  now  became  still  more 
so,  and  Metternich,  who  was  looked  upon  as  the  author  of  it, 
was  loaded  with  abuse.  Public  opinion  called  upon  the 
government  to  enter  into  open  alliance  with  Napoleon's 
enemies.  The  Russians,  obeying  the  orders  of  the  emperor 
Alexander,  declared  that  they  did  not  look  upon  the  Austrians 
as  enemies.  "  We  make  war,"  they  said,  "  only  against  French- 
men and  Poles."  A  diplomatic  agent  was  even  sent  to 
Schwarzenberg  to  propose  that  his  neutrality  should  be  recog- 
nized, and,  though  he  refused  this  offer,  he  wiUingly  consented 
to  cross  to  the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula. 

Great  was  the  excitement  in  Vienna  when  it  was  known 
that  the  king  of  Prussia  had  left  Berlin  and  entered  into  open 
alliance  with  the  enemies  of  France.  The  hotel  of  baron 
Humboldt,  the  Prussian  ambassador,  became  the  meeting- 
place  of  all  who  rejoiced  over  the  humiliation  of  France.  A 
large  number  of  emigrant  Prussians  had  found  refuge  in 
Vienna,  and  among  them  the  poet  Theodore  Korner,  the 
Tyrtaeus  of  Germany,  who  had  become  attached  to  the  theatre 
at  Vienna  as  dramatic  poet.  Even  at  the  time  of  the  French 
alliance  Korner  had  composed  songs  which  could  not  fail  to 
rouse  hatred  against  France,  as,  for  instance,  one  on  the 
victory  of  Aspern,  which,  according  to  him,  was  a  German 


44^  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

victory:  "■  Diese  Schlacht  hat  Deutsches  Volk  geschlagen  "  ("  This 
battle  has  the  German  nation  fought ").  He  had  addressed  most 
enthusiastic  verses  to  the  archduke  Charles  :  "  My  pride  as  a 
(ierman  bows  down  before  that  German  hero  who  has  kindled 
the  spark  and  the  flame  on  the  altar  of  victory."  He  invoked 
the  shade  of  Hofer,  the  Tyrolese  hero,  in  ardent  terms  :  "  They 
have  captured  thee,  the  slaves  of  the  tyrant;  but  thou  hast 
looked  up  to  heaven  as  to  the  place  of  victory ;  the  path  of 
freedom  runs  through  the  bitterness  of  death."  He  celebrated 
the  burning  of  Moscow :  "  The  Phoenix  of  Russia  flung  itself 
into  the  flames  only  to  come  out  of  them  young  and  glorious; 
already  does  St.  George  brandish  his  victorious  lance." 

The  emperor  Francis  H.  dared  not  show  sympathy  with  the 
passions  raging  around  him,  but  he  proposed  that  Napoleon 
should  make  peace,  and  offered  his  mediation,  which  was 
accepted.  Metternich  was  becoming  anxious  about  the  growth 
of  Russia,  which  had  quite  recently  annexed  Finland  and 
Bessarabia,  and  also  he  did  not  think  the  time  had  yet  come 
when  Napoleon  could  be  attacked  safely.  In  order  that  Austria 
should  be  able  to  interfere  with  any  chance  of  success  it  was 
necessary  that  she  should  be  well  armed  ;  seventy  thousand 
men  were  therefore  sent  to  occupy  Bohemia.  Schwarzenberg 
went  as  ambassador  to  Paris.  He  was  not  to  offer  Napoleon 
merely  the  mediation,  but  rather,  said  Metternich,  "  the  interven- 
tion of  an  ally  who  was  weary  of  the  war  and  desired  to  put  an 
end  to  it."  The  meeting  of  the  Corps  Legislatif  in  February, 
1813,  was  opened  by  so  arrogant  a  speech  from  Napoleon  as  left 
but  little  hope  of  success  from  this  intervention.  Meantime, 
public  feeling  grew  more  and  more  violent  in  Vienna,  and  when 
the  king  of  Prussia  finally  declared  war  against  Napoleon,  it 
could  no  longer  be  restrained,  and  the  government  entered  into  a 
secret  agreement  with  him,  in  consequence  of  which  the  Austrian 
troops  in  Poland  remained  neutral  and  fell  back  into  Galicia. 
Napoleon  tried  to  persuade  Austria  to  make  war  against 
Prussia  by  offering  her  Silesia  and  allowing  it  to  be  understood 
that  he  would  also  give  back  the  lUyrian  Provinces  on  demand. 


MEDIATION  OF  AUSTRIA.  449 

But  his  offers  were  of  no  use  ;  the  marriage  between  ]Maria 
Louisa  and  Napoleon  was  the  only  tie,  and  that  but  a  frail  one, 
which  at  this  time  united  France  to  Austria.  When  Napoleon 
quitted  Paris  he  was  anxious  to  find  out  what  was  the  worth  of 
his  Austrian  alliance,  and  sent  orders  to  the  auxiliary  Austrian 
troops  to  march  with  Poniatowski.  These  orders  received  no 
attention,  and  the  Austrians,  who  had  begun  the  retreat  from 
the  left  bank  of  the  Vistula,  continued  it.  Francis,  however, 
would  not  make  up  his  mind — wanted  even  to  the  very  end  to 
save  appearances  to  the  uttermost — and  therefore  he  obliged 
the  agents  of  England  to  quit  Austrian  territory,  and  ostenta- 
tiously refused  even  to  receive  at  Vienna  the  Prussian  general, 
Scharnhorst,  who  was  coming  to  propose  an  alliance  with 
Russia  and  Prussia.  Secretly,  however,  he  sent  Stadion  to  the 
Russian  camp.  He  congratulated  Napoleon  on  the  victory  at 
Liitzen,  but  at  the  same  time  he  levied  a  special  tax,  called  an 
anticipatory  tax,  on  all  landed  property  in  Galicia,  Bohemia, 
and  the  Hereditary  Provinces,  which  amounted  to  twelve  times 
the  value  of  the  ordinary  tax — say,  forty-five  million  florins. 
Never  did  the  old  adage,  "  Si  vis pacefti  para  bellujfi"  receive  a 
more  complete  application. 

The  command  of  the  army  now  assembled  in  Bohemia  was 
given  to  Karl  Schwarzenberg,  and  his  principal  staff-officer  was 
Joseph  Radetsky,  a  man  who  was  to  have  a  prolonged  military 
career.  The  emperor,  accompanied  by  Metternich  himself, 
set  out  for  Bohemia  in  order  to  be  near  the  centre  of  military 
operations.  On  the  3rd  of  June,  they  reached  Jicin,  and 
Metternich,  after  an  interview  with  the  emperor  Alexander  and 
the  king  of  Prussia  at  the  castle  of  Opocno,  went  on  to  Dresden 
to  see  Napoleon  (28th  June).  Arrived  there,  he  endeavoured 
to  make  the  French  emperor  entertain  proposals  for  a  European 
peace.  He  demanded  that  Napoleon  should  give  up  the 
Hanseatic  towns,  the  Illyrian  Provinces,  the  duchy  of  Warsaw, 
Spain,  and  the  Rhenish  Confederation,  and  that  he  should  allow 
the  pope  to  return  to  Rome.  Intoxicated  by  victory,  the  con- 
queror refused  to  listen  to  such  terms;   the  utmost  that  he 

2    G 


450  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

would  yield  in  order  to  preserve  the  neutrality  of  Austria  was 
lUyria  ;  but  after  Metternich  had  left  he  authorized  Maret,  his 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  to  enter  into  negociations  with 
Austria,  and  even  to  accept  proposals  for  a  congress  which  was 
to  meet  at  Prague  to  arrange  peace.  Meantime,  while  Metter- 
nich was  at  Dresden,  a  secret  treaty  had  been  signed  at 
Reichenbach  by  Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia  (27th  June). 

The  conference  at  Prague  did  no  real  work.  The  armistice 
which  Napoleon  had  agreed  to  was  only  meant  to  give  him 
time  in  which  to  reorganize  his  army ;  and  while  the  congress 
limited  itself  to  empty  discussion,  the  military  representatives 
of  Russia,  Sweden,  and  Austria  were  at  Trachenberg  in  Silesia, 
agreeing  on  a  plan  of  operations  against  him.  The  general 
direction  of  affairs  was  entrusted  to  Karl  Schwarzenberg.  At 
this  time  he  was  in  the  prime  of  manhood.  He  had  entered 
the  army  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  had  fought  against  the 
Turks  under  Joseph  II.,  and  had  shared  the  campaigns  of  the 
Low  Countries  and  the  Rhine,  and  all  the  wars  against  France. 
He  well  knew  the  enemy  he  had  to  fight,  and  Napoleon 
recognized  in  him  a  worthy  adversary.  "  You  carry  the  mar- 
shal's wand,"  he  said  to  him  one  day ;  "  the  use  of  a  wand  is 
to  beat  all  who  are  in  the  way."  "Sire,"  modestly  replied  the 
marshal,  "  that  is  what  I  should  hope  to  do ;  the  power  alone 
is  wanting."  The  choice  of  Schwarzenberg  as  leader  of  the 
allied  army  was  due  to  his  own  military  talents,  as  much  as 
to  the  wish  to  show  deference  to  Austria. 

Two  Austrian  armies  now  took  the  field,  one  on  the 
frontier  of  the  lUyrian  Provinces,  the  other  on  the  side  of 
Bavaria.  Meantime,  after  hesitating  long.  Napoleon  had 
decided  to  send  a  courier  to  Prague  bearing  the  conditions 
on  which  he  was  prepared  to  make  peace.  He  offered  to 
give  up  the  duchy  of  Warsaw  to  Prussia,  demanded  the  in- 
crease of  Saxony  at  the  expense  of  Prussia,  who  was  to  give 
up  to  her  all  the  right  bank  of  the  Oder,  and  agreed  to  restore 
to  Austria  the  Illyrian  Provinces,  with  the  exception  of  Istria 
and  Trieste.     The  courier  bearing  these  proposals  arrived  at 


CAMPAIGN  OF  \%\2,.  451 

Prague  on  the  morning  of  the  i  ith  of  August.  On  the  evening 
of  the  loth,  Metternich  had  placed  in  the  hands  of  Caulaincourt 
a  note  which  announced  the  aUiance  of  Austria  with  Russia 
and  Prussia  against  Napoleon,  and  on  the  15th  of  August  the 
emperor  Alexander  arrived  in  Prague,  and  the  French  am- 
bassador quitted  Bohemia.  The  Austrian  army  had  an  im- 
portant part  to  play  in  the  campaign  which  was  thus  opened. 

Campaign  ^1813. 

Protected  on  every  side  by  mountains,  Bohemia  offered  the 
allied  armies  a  safe  meeting-place  and  a  secure  base  of  opera- 
tions. On  the  17th  of  August,  the  army  under  Schwarzenberg 
marched  through  the  passes  of  the  Erzgebirge  into  Silesia. 
The  Russian  allies  were  commanded  by  Barclay  de  Tolly, 
whose  insubordination  caused  much  difficulty  to  the  generalis- 
simo. "  Russians,  Prussians,  Austrians,  you  fight  only  for 
the  freedom  of  Europe  and  the  independence  of  your  native 
lands.  All  for  one,  one  for  all !  Let  this  be  your  battle-cry, 
and  victory  must  be  yours" — thus  ran  the  proclamation  of 
Schwarzenberg,  and  thus  was  ushered  in  the  campaign  of  18 13. 
Throughout  the  whole  of  it  the  military  history  of  Austria  is 
closely  connected  with  that  of  France  and  Germany,  and  there 
is  no  need  for  us  to  do  more  than  recall  the  chief  stages  of  the 
war — the  battle  of  Leipzig  (i3th-i5th  October,  1813);  the 
retreat  of  Napoleon  to  the  French  frontier ;  the  campaign  in 
France;  and  the  taking  of  Paris  in  March,  1814. 

We  shall  only  describe  in  detail  that  part  of  the  war  which 
was  fought  on  the  soil  of  the  Austrian  empire.  At  the  begin- 
ning of  the  campaign  a  division  of  the  French  army  entered 
Bohemia,  and  penetrated  as  far  as  Kulm,  where  it  was  beaten 
by  the  allies  and  forced  to  recross  the  frontier.  On  the  9th 
of  September,  by  the  treaty  of  Teplitz,  the  emperor  Francis 
renewed  and  confirmed  the  alliance  between  Russia,  Prussia, 
and  Austria.  Each  of  the  three  powers  agreed  to  maintain 
a  body  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  troops ;  Prussia  was 
restored  to  the  position  she  had  occupied  in  1805,  Austria  to 


452  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

that  she  had  held  in  1806;  the  fate  of  the  grand-duchy  of 
Warsaw  was  left  for  future  decision.  After  the  defeat  of  Kulm, 
Napoleon  made  a  second  attempt  to  enter  Bohemia  on  the 
17  th  of  September,  but  he  was  repulsed  by  Schwarzenberg. 
The  two  adversaries  met  again  at  Leipzig. 

The  military  operations  to  the  south-west  of  the  monarchy 
had  immediate  results  for  Austria,  At  the  beginning  of  the 
campaign,  the  viceroy  of  Italy  took  up  his  quarters  at  Gorica, 
his  troops  being  scattered  around  Trieste,  Ljubljana  (Laybach), 
and  A^illach.  Klagenfurt  was  the  head-quarters  of  Hiller,  the 
Austrian  general.  Hostilities  began  on  the  i8th  of  August, 
when  the  Austrians  took  Karlovac  and  Rieka  (Fiume)  without 
resistance.  As  soon  as  the  Croatian  shores  were  reconquered, 
a  division  of  the  army  was  sent  into  Dalmatia,  while  the 
Austrians  at  the  same  time  invaded  Tyrol  by  way  of  the 
Pusterthal,  and  Istria  was  at  the  same  time  attacked  by 
the  Slav  Lazaric,  a  brave  soldier  who  managed  to  arm  the 
peasants  and  to  get  possession  of  Pola  and  Trieste. 

In  Upper  Austria,  the  Bavarian  general  Wrede  and  the 
Austrian  Reuss  confronted  one  another,  but  nothing  serious  was 
done.  The  king  of  Bavaria  had  been  invited  by  the  emperors  of 
Austria  and  Russia  to  join  their  alliance,  and  prince  Reuss 
had  been  authorized  to  treat  with  his  adversary  \  the  Bavarians 
in  consequence  were  of  no  real  assistance  to  prince  Eugene. 
On  the  8th  of  October,  the  convention  of  Ried,  which  placed 
the  Bavarian  army  at  the  service  of  the  allies,  was  signed  by 
general  Wrede,  and  Eugene  found  himself  forced  to  retire  at 
every  point.  On  the  29th  of  September,  he  abandoned  Laybach 
to  the  enemy  ;  and  before  long  he  was  obliged  to  recross  the 
Isonzo  and  to  abandon  the  fortified  camp  at  Tarvis  (8th 
October).  Fouche,  the  governor-general  of  the  Illyrian  Pro- 
vinces, took  refuge  on  Venetian  territory. 

When  the  news  of  the  treaty  entered  into  by  Austria  and 
Bavaria  reached  Tyrol,  it  was  received  with  the  greatest  enthu- 
siasm, and  the  Austrian  troops  who  arrived  at  Innsbruck  on 
their  way  into  Italy  were  welcomed  with  joy.     They  continued 


RECOVERY  OF  TYROL   AND  DALMATIA.  453 

their  march  southwards,  took  Trent,  and  then  entered  the 
peninsula.  Southern  Tyrol  was  now  entirely  in  the  power  of 
the  Austrians,  and  the  Tyrolese  of  Innsbruck,  jealous  of  the 
happier  fate  of  their  fellow-countrymen,  rose  against  the  Bava- 
rians and  drove  them  away.  The  Austrian  general,  Bellegarde, 
had  great  difficulty  in  restoring  order.  He  had  replaced 
Hiller  in  the  command,  and  as  soon  as  he  could  he  pushed 
on  the  campaign  into  Italy,  while  general  Tomasic  occupied 
the  town  of  Knin,  in  Dalmatia,  and  blockaded  Zadar,  Spljet 
(Spalato),  and  Lesina.  Tomasic  had  the  assistance  of  troops 
furnished  by  an  English  squadron  which  was  cruising  in  the 
Adriatic.  The  native  soldiers  in  the  besieged  cities  of  Dal- 
matia soon  laid  down  their  arms,  less  out  of  sympathy  for 
Austria  than  from  a  wish  to  make  common  cause  with  their 
Slav  compatriots  who  were  attacking  them.  General  Roise 
at  Zadar,  after  having  in  vain  tried  to  restore  discipline  by 
terror,  was  obliged  to  allow  his  Dalmatians  to  leave  the  town, 
and  had  himself  to  capitulate  on  the  6th  of  December.  The 
Servian  Milutinovic  was  sent  against  Ragusa.  The  French 
only  had  possession  of  the  citadel,  the  rest  of  the  town 
being  in  the  hands  of  the  inhabitants,  who  cared  nothing 
for  the  Austrians  and  were  only  desirous  of  recovering  the 
independence  of  their  ancient  republic.  They  received 
assistance  from  Peter  Petrovic  Niegosh,  the  celebrated  prince 
or  vladyka  of  Montenegro,  who  hoped  to  be  able  to  annex  the 
harbour  of  Cattaro  to  his  little  principality.  Milutinovic 
arrived  before  Ragusa,  bombarded  the  citadel  with  cannon 
supplied  him  by  the  English,  got  possession  of  it,  and,  as  soon 
as  he  had  the  town  under  the  fire  of  his  artillery,  displayed  the 
Austrian  flag.  Thus  by  the  beginning  of  the  year  1S14 
Austria  was  mistress  of  the  whole  of  the  coast  of  the  Adriatic. 
The  reannexation  of  Dalmatia  and  the  Illyrian  Provinces 
and  the  restitution  of  Tyrol  were  to  her  the  most  important 
results  of  that  gigantic  struggle  which  was  only  to  be  finally 
closed  on  the  field  of  Waterloo. 


454  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Battle  of  Leipzig  (1813) — The  Austrians  in  Paris. 

Success  in  Dalmatia  had  been  rendered  much  more  easy 
by  the  disasters  which  befel  Napoleon  at  the  beginning  of  his 
German  campaign.  The  battle  of  Leipzig  had  been  gained  by 
the  allies  under  the  command  of  Schwarzenberg,  and  the  French 
army  had  been  obliged  to  fall  back  on  the  Rhine.  All  the 
more  credit  was  due  to  Schwarzenberg  because  he  had  only 
been  able  to  carry  out  his  plans  after  a  long  struggle  with  the 
emperor  Alexander,  the  king  of  Prussia,  and  the  emperor 
Francis  himself.  The  evening  before  the  battle  he  wrote  to 
his  wife,  "  When  I  look  out  of  my  window  I  think  that  I  have 
before  me  the  greatest  general  of  our  time,  a  very  emperor  of 
battles.  It  seems  to  me  as  if  my  shoulders  were  far  too  weak 
and  must  give  way  under  the  gigantic  burden  they  have  to 
bear.  But  when  I  look  up  to  the  stars  I  say  to  myself  that  He 
who  directs  their  course  has  also  traced  my  path.  If  it  is  His 
will  that  the  just  cause  shall  triumph,  His  wisdom  will  en- 
lighten me  and  strengthen  my  weakness.  Should  it  be  the 
will  of  Providence  that  we  should  fail,  my  personal  loss  will  be 
the  smallest  of  our  misfortunes,  and,  whether  we  fail  or  succeed, 
I  have  already  conquered  all  self-conceit,  and  the  judgment 
of  the  world  can  bring  me  neither  reward  nor  punishment. " 

Quite  early  in  the  day  Napoleon  saw  what  Schwarzenberg 
was  worth.  "  It  was  I,"  he  said  to  the  Austrian  Merveldt,  who 
was  brought  to  him  as  a  prisoner — "  it  was  I  who  called  the 
attention  of  your  sovereign  to  Schwarzenberg.  Does  he  wish 
to  beat  me  ?  Truly,  he  is  going  the  right  way  to  work ; "  and 
he  sent  Merveldt  back  to  propose  an  armistice.  The  Austrians 
were  to  fall  back  into  Bohemia,  the  Prussians  and  Russians 
to  retire  behind  the  Oder,  and  the  French  behind  the  Saale ; 
Saxony  was  to  remain  neutral.  But  it  was  too  late.  Francis 
refused  to  listen  to  these  conditions,  and  his  audacity  was 
justified  by  victory.  After  the  battle  was  over  he  sent  Schwar- 
zenberg the  grand  cross  of  the  order  of  Maria  Theresa.  The 
field-marshal  presented  _his  commander's  cross  to  Radetsky, 


NEGOCIATIONS    WITH  NAPOLEON.  455 

saying,  "  Loudon  wore  this,  but  I  could  not  give  it  to  any  one 
more  worthy  of  it."  The  diplomatist  who  had  brought  about 
the  coalition  was  not  forgotten  in  the  distribution  of  imperial 
favours.  On  the  20th  of  October,  1813,  Metternich  received 
the  title  of  hereditary  prince.  Among  the  Austrian  officers 
who  especially  distinguished  themselves  on  the  memorable 
days  of  the  battle  of  Leipzig,  the  generals  Nostitz  and  Bianchi 
ought  to  be  mentioned,  as  well  as  Stephen  Szechenyi,  a  young 
Hungarian  who  was  afterwards  known  as  the  Great  Magyar. 
The  Austrian  army  lost  four  hundred  and  thirty-five  officers 
and  fifteen  thousand  four  hundred  and  eighteen  men  killed, 
wounded,  or  taken  prisoners,  being  a  third  of  the  total  loss  of 
the  allies,  which  amounted  to  forty-seven  thousand  men. 

The  Austrian  troops  also  took  part  in  the  battle  of  Hanau, 
when,  with  the  help  of  the  Bavarians,  they  tried  to  cut  off 
the  retreat  of  Napoleon.  The  coalition  was  gradually  joined 
by  the  countries  belonging  to  the  Federation  of  the  Rhine, 
Wiirtemberg  and  Hesse-Darmstadt,  and  on  the  5th  of  De- 
cember Francis  H.  entered  the  town  of  Frankfort,  where, 
twenty  years  before,  he  had  received  the  imperial  crown. 
There  Schwarzenberg  established  his  head-quarters. 

The  army  of  the  allies  was  now  on  the  borders  of  France. 
Metternich  thought  that  the  humiliation  of  Napoleon  ought  not 
to  be  carried  too  far,  and  tried  to  enter  into  negociations  from 
Frankfort.  He  sent  for  Saint-Aignan,  who  was  French  minister 
at  the  court  of  Weimar,  and  dictated  to  him  the  terms  on 
which  a  treaty  might  be  arranged.  France  was  to  give  up 
Holland,  Italy,  and  Switzerland,  and  was  to  accept  the  natural 
frontiers  of  the  Pyrenees,  Alps,  and  Rhine  as  her  boundaries. 

On  the  14th  of  November,  Saint-Aignan  carried  these  pro- 
posals to  Paris.  Napoleon  would  return  no  decided  answer,  and 
proposed  that  a  conference  should  meet  at  Mannheim.  This  the 
allies  refused,  and  emboldened  by  the  success  which  met  them 
on  all  sides,  especially  in  Spain  and  Holland,  the  march  on 
Paris  was  decided  upon  in  a  council  of  war  presided  over  by 
Francis  H.     Still,  even  when  the  first  battles  of  the  campaign 


456  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HVNGARY. 

in  France  were  being  fought,  Caulaincourt  and  Metternich  con- 
tinued their  negociations.     On  the  5  th  of  February,   18 14,  a 
conference  was  opened  at  Chatillon-sur-Seine,  where  the  aUies 
demanded  that  France  should  return  to  what  had  been  her  limits 
in  1790.     Napoleon  was  intoxicated  at  the  moment  by  the 
temporary  triumphs  of  Champaubert  (loth  February),  Mont- 
mirail  (nth  February),  and  Vauxchamp  (14th  February),  and 
endeavoured  ^to   enter  into  direct   negociation  with    Francis, 
offering  to  divide  with  him  the  empire  of  Europe.     He  thought 
victory  had  once  more  returned  to  his  banner.     "  I  am  nearer 
to  Vienna  than  they  are  to  Paris,"  he  exclaimed  in  his  infatua- 
tion.    But  on  the  ist  of  March  a  treaty  was  signed  at  Chau- 
mont    by    the    representatives     of    the    allies  —  Metternich, 
Nesselrode,  Hardenberg,  and  Castlereagh — by  virtue  of  which 
the  allies  undertook  not  to  lay  down  arms   until  peace  and 
the  balance  of  power  in  Europe  had  been  established  on  a 
firm  basis.     This  treaty  was  to  last  twenty  years.     It  stipulated 
that  each  of  the  continental  powers  was  to  furnish  fifty  thou- 
sand   men,    while    England    should    contribute   five   millions 
sterling.     None  of  the  powers  signing  the  treaty  was  to  make 
peace  on  its  own  account.     It  was  on  the  1 9th  of  March  that 
the  congress  of  Chatillon    broke  up  without  coming  to  any 
conclusion,    and    Schwarzenberg,    without    troubling    himself 
further  about  Napoleon,  decided  to  march  directly  on  Paris. 
On  the  30th,  the  allies   entered  the    French  capital.     Their 
success   was    due   to   the   wise    temerity   of    Schwarzenberg. 
Napoleon  once  said  to  Koller,  the  Austrian  who  accompanied 
him  to  the  island  of  Elba,  "An  ordinary  general  would  have 
been   anxious   about  his  return,  and  troubled  as  to  how  he 
should  keep  up  his  line  of  communication  ;  a  good  general 
could  do  nothing  but  just  what  Schwarzenberg  did.     I  knew 
he  was  capable  of  doing  it,  but  I  believed  that  he  would  wait 
to   ask   the   consent  of  the  sovereigns,  and  would  thus  lose 
the  favourable   moment."     Bliicher   confirmed  the  judgment 
of  Napoleon  when,   years  later,   during  a  visit  to    Carlsbad, 
he  drank  to  "  the  hero  who,  in  spite  of  the  presence  of  three 


TREATY  OF  FONTAINEBLEAU.  457 

kings,  led  us  to  victory."  All  the  courts  of  Europe  loaded 
the  happy  conqueror  of  Paris  with  distinctions.  The  city  of 
London  voted  him  a  sword  of  honour,  the  university  of  Oxford 
made  him  a  doctor  of  civil  law,  Bohemia  erected  a  statue 
to  him,  and  the  emperor  of  Austria  granted  him  permission 
to  quarter  the  arms  of  the  house  of  Austria  with  his  own. 

Francis  11.  did  not  enter  Paris  at  the  same  time  as  his  two 
allies,  but  he  gave  them  full  powers  to  arrange  the  position  of 
his  son-in-law  and  his  daughter,  and  did  not  allow  his  feelings 
as  a  father  to  interfere  with  reasons  of  state.  He  reached 
Paris  on  the  15th  of  AikH.  On  the  nth  had  already 
been  signed  the  treaty  of  Fontainebleau,  Avhich  gave  Parma, 
Piacenza,  and  Guastella  to  Maria  Louisa,  and  the  isle  of  Elba 
to  Napoleon.  The  daughter  of  the  Caesars  did  not  go  into 
exile  with  her  husband.  After  an  interview  with  her  father 
and  the  emperor  Alexander,  she  returned  to  Austria,  accom- 
panied by  her  son,  the  king  of  Rome,  who  was  henceforth 
known  by  the  name  of  the  duke  of  Reichstadt.  Little  interest 
attaches  to  Maria  Louisa  ;  she  was  not  true  to  her  husband 
even  during  his  lifetime.  When  she  passed  through  Inns- 
briick  on  her  way  to  Austria,  the  Tyrolese  received  the 
daughter  of  their  emperor  with  an  enthusiasm  she  little 
deserved.  She  retired  to  Schonbrunn,  and  died  at  Vienna 
in  1847. 

In  Italy,  the  two  kings  who  had  been  created  by  Napoleon 
— Eugene  at  Rome  and  Murat  at  Naples — were  unable  to 
unite  for  the  defence  of  their  thrones  against  the  coalition. 
Whilst  Eugene  fought  the  Austrian  troops  under  Bellegarde  on 
the  Adige,  Murat  tried  to  obtain  possession  of  Rome,  Bologna, 
and  the  whole  of  Central  Italy.  The  English  and  Austrians 
got  hold  of  Tuscany.  Bellegarde  marched  into  Milan,  and  by 
the  12th  of  June  the  treaty  of  Paris  was  able  to  restore  to  the 
Austrian  monarchy  the  whole  country  from  the  Po  to  the 
Ticino.  Austria  was  consequently  in  a  position  to  decide 
the  fate  of  the  peninsula,  and  did  so  by  placing  the  old  rulers 
on  the  thrones  of  the  various  states — Francis  IV.  in  Modena 


458  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

and  Reggio,  Ferdinand  in  Tuscany,  Ferdinand  IV.  in  the 
kingdom  of  the  Two  Sicilies.  The  history  of  Austrian  rule 
in  Italy  is  tolerably  well  known,  and  is  not  included  in  the 
scheme  of  this  work. 

The  Congress  of  Vienna  (1814-1815). 

On  the  2nd  of  May,  18 14,  Louis  XVIII.  entered  Paris 
and  the  war  was  at  an  end.  Schwarzenberg  laid  down  his 
command  and  the  work  of  diplomacy  began.  It  was  not  an 
easy  matter  to  settle  the  division  of  the  spoils  of  conquest.  It 
had  been  agreed,  for  example,  that  the  grand-duchy  of 
Warsaw  should  be  shared  among  the  three  monarchs,  but  the 
emperor  Alexander  wanted  the  whole  of  Poland,  and  now 
objected  to  this  arrangement.  He  had  gained  the  king  of 
Prussia  over  to  his  views  by  promising  that  he  should  have 
Saxony,  whose  king  had  been  taken  prisoner  after  the  battle  of 
Leipzig.  Metternich  showed  great  perseverance  and  ability 
in  his  defence  of  his  sovereign's  interests,  and  at  last  succeeded 
in  gaining  the  agreement  of  the  allies  that  peace  should  first  of 
all  be  made  with  France,  and  that  all  other  questions  should 
be  postponed  to  the  decision  of  a  congress  which  was  to  meet 
at  Vienna.  The  choice  of  Vienna  as  the  place  of  meeting  was 
an  act  of  homage  to  the  leading  part  which  had  been  played 
by  Austria  in  the  coalition,  and  also  to  the  military  talents  of 
the  generalissimo.  On  the  30th  of  May,  the  peace  was  signed 
with  dismembered  France.  On  the  14th  of  June,  another 
treaty  was  signed  by  Austria,  Great  Britain,  Prussia,  and 
Russia,  by  which  the  Low  Countries,  which  had  long  ceased 
to  belong  to  Austria,  were  annexed  to  Holland.  Before  this 
date  Francis  II.  had  returned  to  his  own  kingdom,  and  had 
made  a  solemn  entry  into  his  capital.  Never  had  Austrian 
monarch  descended  so  low  to  raise  himself  again  so  high! 
Twice  he  had  seen  the  enemy  in  the  very  heart  of  his  country ; 
twice  he  had  left  as  a  fugitive  that  capital  to  which  he  now 
came  as  a  conqueror  and  the  arbiter  of  the  peace  of  Europe, 
with  Austria  again  in  possession  of  almost  the  whole  of  her 


CONGRESS  OF  VIENNA.  459 

ancient  frontier.  The  allies  had  promised  to  her  the  restitu- 
tion of  Lombardy,  Venice,  Southern  Tyrol,  and  Dalmatia, 
and  the  last-mentioned  province  was,  in  fact,  already  in  the 
hands  of  her  troops.  On  the  7th  of  June,  Francis  had  signed 
a  secret  treaty  with  Bavaria,  which  restored  to  him  Northern 
Tyrol,  Vorarlberg,  and  Salzburg,  together  with  the  districts  of 
the  Inn  and  Hausruck,  on  condition  that  he  should  in  some 
way  indemnify  Bavaria.  The  return  of  the  Habsburgs  was 
hailed  with  delight  by  the  Tyrolese,  but  at  Milan  and  in 
Ragusa  again  discontent  broke  out.  The  old  capital  of  the 
Cisalpine  republic  and  of  the  kingdom  of  Italy,  and  the  mari- 
time republic  which  had  enjoyed  centuries  of  prosperity  and 
independence,  could  not  resign  themselves  to  becoming  merely 
chief  towns  in  Austrian  provinces. 

With  the  exception  of  those  countries  which  had  been  the 
subject  of  the  secret  treaty  with  Bavaria,  Austria  had  already 
obtained  possession  of  all  her  old  dominions  before  the 
congress  met.  She  had  nothing  more  to  do  but  to  make 
a  formal  renunciation  of  the  Low  Countries  and  of  the 
Vorldnde  in  the  Breisgau  and  Suabia. 

In  the  month  of  September,  the  crowned  heads  met  at 
Vienna.  The  kings  of  Wurtemberg,  Denmark,  Bavaria,  and 
Prussia,  and  the  emperor  of  Russia  all  attended  the  congress ; 
business,  however,  went  on  but  slowly,  as  most  of  the  time  was 
given  up  Xo  fetes.  The  saying  of  the  prince  de  Ligne  is  well 
known — "  Le  congres  ne  marche  pas,  il  danse."  ^  The  first 
anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Leipzig  was  celebrated  by  a  gigantic 
review,  at  which  Alexander  paid  solemn  homage  to  the  military 
skill  of  Schwarzenberg.  " 'Tis  to  you,  after  God,"  said  he, 
"that  we  owe  our  success." 

The  preliminary  arrangements  were  not  easy,  Poland,  which 
was  coveted  by  many,  gave  rise  to  more  than  one  disagreement; 
and  Metternich,  though  he  was  supported  by  Castlereagh  and 
Talleyrand,  had  to  overcome  a  good  deal  of  opposition  on 

'  An  untranslatable  play  on  the  two  senses  of  marcher — to  walk  and 
to  advance. 


460  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY.       ■ 

the  part  of  the  representatives  of  the  other  powers.  Finally, 
however,  the  congress  was  officially  opened  on  the  ist  of 
November,  with  Metternich  as  its  president  and  Talleyrand  as 
secretary.  It  was  never  a  real  congress,  but  rather  a  series  of 
meetings  or  committees  where  questions  which  were  specially 
interesting  to  particular  countries  were  discussed  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  those  countries.  The  subjects  of  discussion  were 
not  only  the  results  of  the  great  struggle  which  had  shaken  the 
whole  of  Europe,  but  general  questions,  such  as  the  navigation 
of  the  rivers  of  Central  Europe,  the  slave-trade,  and  the  pirates 
of  the  Mediterranean.  The  congress  was  divided  into  a 
number  of  sections,  and  was  treated  as  if  it  were  a  European 
tribunal,  before  which  all  who  had  suffered  in  the  revolution 
came  to  demand  redress  for  their  injuries.  The  order  of  the 
Knights  of  St.  John  appealed  to  it  for  the  restitution  of  the 
island  of  Malta,  which  they  had  lost  twenty  years  before,  and 
all  the  tiny  German  princes  urged  upon  it  their  claims  to 
sovereign  power. 

The  greatest  stumbling-block  was  the  Polish  question,  and 
more  than  once  it  threatened  to  break  up  the  assembly. 
Russia  had  taken  possession  of  the  grand-duchy  of  Warsaw 
and  treated  it  as  a  conquered  country.  At  one  moment  it 
seemed  as  if  Metternich  must  break  off  negociations  and 
declare  war  with  the  help  of  Bavaria  \  but  at  last  Nesselrode 
worked  out  a  plan  which  seemed  to  satisfy  every  one,  and 
which  divided  Poland  almost  as  she  is  now.  Another  difficulty 
was  caused  by  the  ambition  of  Prussia,  which  was  fast  becom- 
ing a  most  formidable  neighbour  to  Austria,  and  whose  king 
insisted  on  the  possession  of  Saxony.  In  consequence  of  this, 
a  defensive  alliance  was  secretly  entered  into  by  Austria, 
England,  and  France.  The  situation  was  indeed  very  difficult, 
but  a  way  was  at  last  found  out  of  it  by  the  formation  of  a 
committee  of  five,  made  up  of  the  representatives  of  Austria, 
France,  England,  Prussia,  and  Russia,  who  were  to  settle  all 
disputed  points,  and  this  committee  became  the  real  congress. 
Here  we  see  the  beginning  of  that  system  of  the  five  great 


NAPOLEON'S  RETURN.  46 1 

powers  which  directed  the  destiny  of  Europe  up  to  the  time 
when,  in  the  presence  of  German  supremacy,  "  Europe  has 
ceased  to  exist."  This  committee  persuaded  Prussia  to  give 
up  her  claims  to  Saxony  (except  to  Torgau),  and  arranged  the 
final  partition  of  Poland. 

It  was  on  the  7th  of  March,  in  the  midst  of  all  the  nego- 
ciations  and  fetes,  that  news  reached  Vienna  that  Napoleon 
had  landed  on  the  coast  of  Provence.  Metternich  and  the 
emperor  immediately  gave  orders  that  the  troops  should  march 
towards  France.  On  the  very  evening  that  the  news  arrived, 
a  comedy,  entitled  "The  Interrupted  Dance,"  was  being 
played  at  the  court  theatre.  A  {&\n  days  later,  the  congress 
publicly  declared  that  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  having  violated 
all  law,  was  an  enemy  to  the  public  peace,  and  was  placed 
under  the  ban  of  the  nations. 

On  the  25th  of  March,  the  allies  renewed  the  treaty  of 
Chaumont,  and  declared  themselves  resolved  to  carry  on  the 
war  until  Napoleon  should  be  deprived  of  all  power  to  do 
harm.  The  plan  of  the  campaign  was  drawn  up  at  the  house 
of  Schwarzenberg,  and  the  sovereigns  of  Russia  and  Prussia 
and  Wellington  took  part  in  the  deliberations.  Three  great 
armies  w^ere  formed — one  in  the  Low  Countries,  of  English, 
Prussians,  and  Dutch,  who  were  under  the  command  of 
Wellington  and  Bliicher ;  another  on  the  Rhine,  of  Austrians, 
Russians,  and  Germans,  commanded  by  Schwarzenberg ; 
while  a  third,  composed  of  Austrians,  marched  to  meet  Murat 
in  Italy.  Maria  Louisa  remained  at  Schonbrunn  while  the 
allies  were  on  their  way  to  fight  her  husband,  and  the  war  in 
no  wise  interrupted  the  negociations  of  the  congress.  It  was 
on  the  3rd  of  April  that  the  act  deciding  on  the  final  partition 
of  Poland  was  signed.  The  constitution  of  Germany  was 
drawn  up  during  the  month  of  May,  and  on  the  nth  of  June 
the  sittings  of  the  congress  terminated. 

The  war  began  in  Italy  in  the  month  of  April,  when 
Joachim  Murat  advanced  as  far  as  the  valley  of  the  Po, 
but  he  was   defeated   at   Rimini,  at  Ancona,   and   finally   at 


462  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Torentino,  by  the  imperial  troops.  He  fled  to  Naples ;  but 
the  Austrians  pursued  him,  and  he  was  forced  to  take  refuge 
in  France  (25th  May).  On  the  Rhine  there  was  not  much 
for  the  Austrians  to  do.  They  entered  Alsace,  blockaded  and 
took  Huningue,  and  held  in  check  near  Strasburg  the  small 
army  of  Rapp.  On  the  30th  of  June,  the  allied  monarchs  took 
up  their  quarters  at  Haguenau,  where  they  received  a  deputa- 
tion from  the  French  chambers,  headed  by  Lafayette.  He  was 
told  that  no  steps  towards  peace  could  be  taken  until  Napoleon 
was  given  up  to  the  allies.  The  main  body  of  Schwarzenberg's 
army  marched  to  Paris  and  entered  the  city  without  resistance. 
No  Austrian  fought  at  Waterloo.  Once  more  the  three  allies 
found  themselves  in  Paris,  and  it  was  during  this  second  visit 
that  Alexander  proposed  that  Holy  Alliance  the  idea  of  which 
is  said  to  have  been  inspired  by  Madame  de  Krudener^ 
(26th  September).  The  second  treaty  of  Paris  was  signed  on 
the  20th  of  November,  1815.  By  it  France  was  required  to 
pay  an  indemnity  of  seven  hundred  millions  of  francs,  and  to 
submit  to  the  occupation  of  her  eastern  provinces  by  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men. 

Austria  after  the  Treaty  of  Vienna. 

What  were  the  results  of  so  many  battles  and  so  much 
diplomacy  ?  No  Austrian  monarch  had  ever  passed  through 
such  a  series  of  reverses  and  triumphs  as  Francis  II.  Four 
times  had  he  been  obliged  to  accept  a  humiliating  peace  from 
the  hands  of  the  conqueror.  Twice  he  had  seen  him  enter  his 
capital.  He  had  lost  one  after  another  the  Austrian  Low 
Countries,  the  lands  in  Suabia,  and  the  duchy  of  Milan  ;  he  had 

'  "  In  this  period  of  mystical  fervour  the  idea  of  the  Holy  Alliance 
.  .  .  was  formulated  by  Alexander  in  the  act  of  the  26th  of  September, 
1815.  .  .  .  This  act  was  submitted  to  Madame  Krudener  for  revision, 
who  adopted  it  with  enthusiasm,  but  who  had  not  inspired  it  "  ("  Nouvelle 
Biographic  Universelle ").  Madame  Krudener — Julie  de  Wietinghoff, 
Baronne  de  Krudener,  born  at  Riga  1764,  died  1S24.  Russian  romance 
writer  and  mystic.  Married  Baron  de  Krudener,  ambassador  first  at 
Venice,  then  at  Copenhagen. 


CONDITION  OF  AUSTRIA.  463 

received  as  compensation  Venice,  Dalmatia,  Salzburg,  and 
Western  Galicia ;  then  again  he  had  lost  all  these  possessions  ; 
he  had  had  to  sacrifice  the  Hereditary  Provinces,  the  faithful 
Tyrol,  Istria,  which  secured  the  possession  of  the  Adriatic, 
Trieste,  Gorica,  half  of  Carinthia,  Carniola,  and  part  of  Croatia  ; 
and  he  had  had  to  lay  down  that  imperial  crown  which  had  been 
for  centuries  the  ornament  and  the  glory  of  his  house.  After 
the  treaty  of  Vienna,  he  found  himself  at  the  head  of  an  empire 
vigorous,  compact,  and  with  better  boundaries  than  the 
Austria  of  the  days  before  the  revolution  had  ever  possessed, 
with  an  army  and  a  diplomatic  corps  which  excited  the  envy 
of  Europe.  He  had  the  hegemony  in  both  Germany  and 
Italy.  The  younger  branches  of  his  family  had  been  restored 
to  their  thrones  in  Tuscany  and  Modena.  And  the  empress 
Maria  Louisa  was  to  have  the  investiture  of  Parma,  Guastella, 
and  Piacenza  for  her  life.  In  Germany,  he  had  recovered  all 
the  lands  of  which  Bavaria  had  deprived  Austria,  with  the 
exception  of  Berchtolsgaden,  which  remained  part  of  the  new 
kingdom.  The  Low  Countries,  Suabia,  the  Breisgau,  Switzer- 
land, and  Western  Galicia,  which  he  had  been  forced  to 
abandon,  had  always  been  troublesome  possessions.  To  sum 
up  briefly,  instead  of  the  twenty-four  millions  of  inhabitants, 
spread  over  266,000  square  miles  between  the  North  Sea 
and  the  Danube,  which  Austria  had  possessed  in  1792,  in 
1 8 15  she  had  twenty-eight  millions,  dwelling  on  a  compact 
space  of  277,637  square  miles.  Every  portion  of  the  empire 
was  contiguous,  excepting  at  one  corner,  where  the  Turkish 
district  of  Klek  and  the  Sutorina  interrupted  the  coast  line  of  its 
Dalmatian  possessions.  The  empire  of  Austria  now  included 
five  kingdoms  of  various  origin — Bohemia;  Hungary;  Galicia; 
Illyria,  which  was  made  up  of  lUyrian  Provinces  speaking  the 
Slovene  tongue,  but  was  in  no  real  sense  a  kingdom ;  and  the 
Lombardo- Venetian  kingdom,  whose  symbol  was  the  iron 
crown  of  Lombardy. 

Francis  II.  declined  the  proposals  of  those  who  wished 
him  to  accept  once  more  the  imperial  crown  in  Germany,  but 


464  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

he  by  no  means  wished  to  give  up  his  position  as  leader  of  the 
German  world.  Modern  Germany  may  be  said  to  have  been 
made  by  Austria ;  the  final  construction  of  the  German  states 
had  taken  place  in  Vienna  ;  and,  in  exchange  for  these  services, 
Metternich  claimed  that  his  sovereign  should  be  president  of 
the  diet  at  Frankfort,  and  had  his  claim  allowed.  But  in  order 
that  the  supremacy  of  Austria  should  be  maintained  in  Germany, 
it  was  necessary  that  the  largest  possible  num.ber  of  her  German 
subjects  should  belong  to  the  German  confederation  ;  Francis 
therefore  declared  that  every  one  of  his  provinces  which  had  at 
any  time  belonged  to  the  German  empire  now  formed  part  of 
that  confederation.  Amongst  these  provinces  the  only  ones 
which  were  purely  German  were  Austria,  Salzburg,  the  Northern 
Tyrol,  and  the  Vorarlberg,  which  countries  contained  at  most 
some  three  or  four  millions  of  Germans.  In  order,  therefore, 
to  make  up  the  number  needful  to  maintain  the  position  of 
Francis,  to  these  were  added  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia,  of 
whose  population  two-thirds  were  Slavs ;  Moravia,  with  four- 
fifths  of  hers  Slavs  ;  Styria,  whose  people  were  half  of  them 
Slovenes ;  Carinthia,  Carniola,  Gorica,  and  Gradiska,  which 
were  entirely  Slovene ;  Istria  and  Trieste,  half  Slovene,  half 
Italian;  the  Tyrol,  Italian;  Austrian  Silesia,  half  Slav;  and  the 
Polish  duchies  of  Osviecim  (Auschwitz)  and  Zator  in  Galicia. 
By  the  help  of  this  diplomatic  fiction  Austria  forced  six  or 
seven  millions  of  pseudo-Germans  into  the  German  confedera- 
tion, and  from  the  point  of  view  of  numbers  could  make 
a  good  show  at  Frankfort. 

But  it  was  not  long  before  she  had  to  regret  that  she  had 
ever  sought  her  centre  of  gravity  outside  her  own  boundaries. 
From  this  time,  to  justify  her  claim  to  be  a  German  power,  she 
had  to  try  harder  than  ever  to  Germanize  her  people,  and  in 
so  doing  to  place  every  possible  hindrance  in  the  way  of  the 
development  of  their  natural  genius  and  political  freedom. 
And  when,  in  the  end,  a  more  fortunate  rival  had  driven 
Austria  out  of  the  German  confederation,  German  ambition 
still    laid    claim    to    those   lands   which   had    so   long    been 


INFLUENCE   OF   THE  ARMY.  465 

represented    as   part    of  the    empire,  and    to  which   she  was 
accustomed  to  consider  she  had  an  absolute  right. 

The  consolidation  of  her  territory  was  not  the  only  result 
of  the  twenty  years'  war  which  Austria  had  had  to  wage. 
She  had  strengthened  her  internal  organization  by  the  creation 
of  an  army  such  as  had  never  been  known  to  Joseph  11.  or 
Maria  Theresa.  There  had  been  developed  in  this  army  a 
spirit  of  discipline  and  a  brotherhood  in  arms  which  had 
mastered,  drawn  together,  and  inspired  with  the  same  feelings 
soldiers  from  countries  the  most  unlike — Germans,  Slavs,  and 
j\ragyars.  This  army  was  able  to  save  the  empire  on  more 
than  one  occasion,  and  to  enforce  the  obedience  which  comes 
from  fear  on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  as  well  as  to  spread  ideas  of 
fidelity  to  a  flag  and  to  the  monarchical  principle  which  have 
given  Austria  new  vigour.  But  in  spite  of  this,  the  govern- 
ment has  been  unable  to  stifle  the  aspirations  of  the  various 
states  towards  liberal  and  national  development,  or  to  refuse 
the  gradual  restoration  of  those  historical  rights  which,  though 
they  may  be  ignored  by  the  sovereigns,  are  sure  to  be  some 
day  claimed  by  the  nations. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

FRANCIS  II.  AND    METTERNICH  (1815-1835). 

Metternich. 

The  treaties  of  1815  seemed  to  have  put  an  end  to  the  era 
of  revolutions.  The  years  which  followed  were  years  of  steady 
reaction,  in  which  the  European  sovereigns,  who  had  been  so 
fortunate  as  to  save  their  crowns  and  their  dominions  from  the 
hands  of  France,  united  in  one  common  effort  to  resist  the  ideas 
of  1789. 

Amongst  the  princes  who  set  to  work  to  bring  back  their 
subjects  to  the  sound  doctrine  of  the  old  mode  of  government, 
no  one  laboured  with  greater  zeal  than  Francis  II.,  and  he 
found  a  worthy  auxiliary  in  Metternich.  The  mind  of  Francis 
w^as  commonplace,  and  his  character  mean ;  he  could  not 
understand  great  things,  and  attached  extreme  importance  to 
trivial  ones ;  he  had  a  passion  for  writing  useless  documents,  and 
a  mania  for  holding  audiences.  His  ambition,  as  he  loved  to 
say  himself,  w^as  to  be  a  good  Aulic  counsellor.  Fond  of  games 
and  chamber-concerts,  in  which  he  liked  to  take  part  himself, 
"  he  was  always,"  says  M.  Springer,  "  on  the  look-out  for  some 
one  among  his  courtiers  who  would  be  of  use  as  a  member  of 
a  quartette,  and  a  good  musician  would  be  received  at  court  even 
if  his  character  were  infamous."  He  was  envious  of  any  one 
like  the  archduke  Charles  and  Radetsky,  who  had  deserved 
the  popular  favour  by  their  services.  Once,  in  a  fit  of  suspicious 
jealousy,  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  have  the  private  drawers  of 
the  archduke  broken  open.    His  suspicious  character,  moreover, 


ABSOLUTISM  RESTORED.  467 

made  him  cruel.  In  1820,  when  there  was  a  riot  among  the 
students  at  Prague,  and  it  was  found  impossible  to  discover 
the  authors  of  it,  the  emperor  forced  every  student  who  had 
had  bad  marks  from  the  professors  to  enter  the  army.  One 
consequence  of  his  theories  of  absolutism  was  a  harsh  selfish- 
ness, which  led  him  to  look  upon  his  people  and  provinces  as 
private  property,  of  which  he  could  dispose  as  he  pleased ;  but, 
like  some  of  his  predecessors,  he  knew  how  to  clothe  his 
despotism  with  patriarchal  forms,  which  charmed  simple  folk, 
and  easily  gave  occasion  to  flattery.  Instead  of  a  representa- 
tive system  and  assemblies  duly  consulted,  an  inquisitorial 
police  was  the  hnk  between  the  sovereign  and  the  nation.  Like 
Louis  XV.,  he  was  fond  of  scandal,  both  as  a  means  of  amuse- 
ment and  an  instrument  of  government.  In  his  eyes  there  was 
no  surer  support  to  monarchical  power  than  Catholicism  ;  he 
believed  that  Josephinism  in  shaking  religion  could  not  fail  to 
destroy  monarchy.  The  speech  the  emperor  made  to  the  pro- 
fessors of  the  Gymnasium  at  Laybach,  in  182 1,  has  been  often 
quoted  :  "  Keep  yourselves  to  what  is  old,  for  that  is  good  ; 
if  our  ancestors  have  proved  it  to  be  good,  why  should  we  not 
do  as  they  did  ?  New  ideas  are  now  coming  forward,  of  which 
I  do  not,  nor  ever  shall,  approve.  Mistrust  these  ideas  and 
keep  to  the  positive.  I  have  no  need  of  learned  men  ;  I  want 
faithful  subjects.  Be  such  ;  that  is  your  duty.  He  who  would 
serve  me  must  do  what  I  command.  He  who  cannot  do  this, 
or  who  comes  full  of  new  ideas,  may  go  his  way.  If  he  does 
not  go,  I  shall  send  him."  He  said  one  day  to  the  French 
ambassador,  "  My  peoples  are  foreigners  to  one  another ;  so 
much  the  better.  They  will  not  catch  the  same  illnesses  at  the 
same  time.  In  France,  when  you  are  attacked  by  fever,  you  all 
catch  it  on  the  same  day.  I  send  Hungarians  to  Italy,  and 
Italians  to  Hungary,  and  each  one  looks  after  his  neighbour. 
They  do  not  understand  one  another,  they  hate  one  another, 
but  their  antipathy  gives  birth  to  order,  and  their  mutual  hatred 
secures  the  general  peace.'' 

With  principles  such  as  these  the  emperor  was  sure  to  leave 


468  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

nothing  undone  to  keep  foreign  ideas  and  science  out  of  the 
empire.  The  censorship  of  the  press  was  ruthlessly  enforced, 
and  literature  was  treated  as  an  enemy.  It  is  true  that  some 
remarkable  men  had  been  taken  into  the  service  of  x\ustria ; 
Genz,  for  instance — a  person,  however,  of  but  low  morality, 
whose  great  idea  was  to  live  "  furiously  well  " — Frederick 
Schlegel,  and  Adam  Miiller  ;  but  their  works  as  publicists  were 
intended  for  foreigners,  and  remained  almost  unknown  to  the 
subjects  of  the  empire.  The  few  men  of  ability  there  were, 
and  they  were  very  few,  were  looked  upon  with  suspicion. 
Only  one  man  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  entire  confidence 
of  the  sovereign,  and  that  was  Metternich.  The  time  of  war 
was  over,  and  Francis  had  no  longer  any  need  of  his  generals, 
but  the  precarious  state  of  Europe  still  assured  the  diplo- 
matist who  had  negociated  the  treaties  of  Vienna  the  first 
place  in  the  councils  of  his  sovereign.  It  is  true  that  Metternich 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  internal  government  of  the  empire, 
but  his  foreign  policy  had,  certainly,  considerable  influence  on 
the  home  policy  of  Austria.  Metternich  was  born  in  1773,  at 
Coblentz.  He  did  not  come  to  live  in  Vienna  till  the  year 
1809.  He  knew  very  little  of  the  history  of  the  odd  medley  of 
states  over  which  his  sovereign  ruled,  and  cared  less  about 
those  difficulties  of  administration  which  were  the  natural  re- 
sults of  the  constitution  of  the  empire ;  completely  a  man  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  he  despised  history,  and  never  guessed 
what  germs  of  revolution  were  fermenting  in  the  confused  ele- 
ments floating  around  him.  His  high  position  and  continued 
prosperity  he  owed  less  to  his  talents  than  to  the  tenacity  of 
his  ambition  and  a  fortunate  chain  of  circumstances.  The 
military  success  of  Austria  in  1813  and  1815  was  ascribed  to 
him,  and  he  was  credited  with  results  which  were  really  owing 
to  the  sword  of  Schwarzenberg.  The  two  monarchs  whose 
foreign  policy  he  directed  were  too  feeble  to  be  able  to  do  with- 
out him,  and  he  knew  better  than  any  one  how  to  flatter  his 
master.  "  These  two  men,"  says  the  German  historian  Springer, 
"were  the  complements  of  each  other.   Metternich  knew  nothing 


CHARACTER   OF  METTERNICH.  469 

about  the  details  of  government,  and  never  interfered  in  them ; 
the  emperor,  on  the  contrary,  attached  the  greatest  importance 
to  them.  The  emperor  had  entered  into  an  engagement  with 
the  princes  of  Europe  to  maintain  order,  and  aimed  at  carrying 
out  this  engagement  by  maintaining  in  his  own  empire  a  state 
of  perfect  tranquillity.  Metternich  insisted  on  the  passive  obe- 
dience of  all  Austrian  subjects  in  order  to  be  able  to  employ  the 
whole  power  of  the  empire  abroad.  For  the  former,  absolutism 
was  a  matter  of  sentiment ;  for  the  latter,  of  reason.  They 
gradually  came  to  substitute  their  personal  interests  for  the 
good  of  the  state,  and  to  believe  that  the  state  was  satisfied 
when  they  were,  and  in  time  to  look  upon  a  political  con- 
spirator as  no  better  than  a  parricide.  Neither  of  them  had 
the  slightest  feeling  of  responsibility  as  stewards  of  the  national 
wealth."  It  has  been  said,  in  excuse  for  the  absolutism  of 
Metternich,  that  his  dread  of  parliamentary  government  was 
not  so  much  due  to  hatred  of  liberty,  as  to  a  fear  of  arousing 
the  feeling  of  nationality  in  the  various  parts  of  the  empire. 

We  must  add  that  Metternich's  devotion  to  his  sovereign 
was  not  altogether  disinterested.  He  was  not  above  receiving 
gifts  from  foreign  princes,  and  managed  the  public  funds  in  such 
a  fashion  as  showed  that  he  believed  no  account  could  ever  be 
required  of  him.  His  gallantries  more  than  once  scandalized 
the  good  town  of  Vienna,  that  luxurious  and  corrupt  city  in 
which,  according  to  the  saying  of  a  contemporary,  the  life  of 
the  inhabitants  "  resembled  that  of  hibernating  animals." 

Austria  at  the  Head  of  the  React  urn  in  Europe — Meetings  of 
Congress. 

Even  immediately  after  the  congress  of  Vienna  it  was  very 
easy  for  any  one  to  see  that  Europe,  after  her  twenty-five  years 
of  conflict,  had  not  reached  the  Golden  Age  which  had  been 
hoped  for.  The  internal  condition  of  Austria  was  far  from 
being  prosperous,  and  the  splendid  fetes  which  took  place 
during  the  congress  could  make  no  one  forget  for  a  moment 
the  exhausted  condition  of  the  country  or  the  misery  of  its 


470  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

inliabitants.  The  government,  for  whom  the  people  had  made 
so  many  sacrifices,  rewarded  them  by  stiflhig  their  growing  wish 
for  liberty  and  a  free  constitution  ;  and,  in  order  to  maintain  in 
the  eyes  of  Europe  the  position  which  it  had  acquired  by  the 
success  of  its  armies,  the  cabinet  at  Vienna  turned  all  its  atten- 
tion to  the  maintenance  of  the  various  states  in  a  condition  of 
complete  subjection. 

Metternich  and  his  sovereign  set  to  work  to  manage  the 
police  of  the  whole  of  Europe.  It  seemed  to  them  that  every 
revolution  which  broke  out  in  foreign  lands  must  threaten  the 
peace  of  Austria,  for  by  its  German,  Italian,  and  Polish  pos- 
sessions their  country  was  especially  exposed  to  the  contagion  of 
liberal  ideas.  As  early  as  the  year  1815,  the  Italians  began  that 
covert  war  of  conspiracy  and  secret  societies  which  ended,  after 
so  many  years  of  painful  struggle,  in  the  regeneration  of  their 
land  ;  while  in  Germany,  generous  spirits,  especially  among  the 
students,  began  to  demand  intellectual  freedom  and  consti- 
tutional government.  In  August,  1819,  the  sovereigns  of 
Austria  and  Prussia  met  in  a  congress  at  Carlsbad,  and  deter- 
mined to  keep  down  Germany,  and  to  put  an  end  to  all 
dangerous  manifestations.  In  1820,  the  king  of  Naples 
having  been  obliged  to  give  way  to  a  military  insurrection, 
and  to  grant  a  constitution  to  his  subjects,  a  congress  was 
opened,  first  at  Troppau  (1820J,  and  then  at  Laybach  (1821), 
to  consider  the  best  means  of  suppressing  the  revolutionary 
spirit  in  Italy ;  and  this  time  Austria  and  Prussia  were  joined 
by  Russia.  Thus,  notwithstanding  the  protests  of  England 
and  France,  the  three  cabinets  of  Vienna,  Petersburg,  and 
Berlin  took  upon  themselves  to  settle  the  destinies  of  Europe. 
The  king  of  Naples  was  summoned  before  the  congress  at 
Laybach,  and  an  Austrian  army,  commanded  by  the  Baron 
de  Frimont,  entered  the  kingdom  of  Naples  and  brought  the 
liberals  to  reason.  Shortly  after,  a  similar  rising  in  Piedmont 
was  put  down  by  the  Austrian  general  Bubna.  An  army  of 
occupation  remained  in  Italy.  It  was  about  this  time  that  the 
amiable  and  gentle  Silvio  Pellico  was  thrown  into  the  prison 


THE  EASTERN  QUESTION.  47 1 

of  Spielberg,  convicted  of  patriotism.  His  book,  "  I  miei 
Prigioni,"  translated  a  hundred  times  and  read  throughout 
Europe,  remains  to  this  day  as  the  accusation  of  oppressed 
Italy  against  Austrian  rule. 

Francis  II.  rewarded  his  minister  by  granting  him  the  title 
of  chancellor  of  the  kingdom  (1821).  "  Europe,"  says  a  con- 
temporary, "praises,  envies,  or  curses  the  power  of  Austria, 
but  no  one  thinks  of  the  Austrian  people.  They  think  only  of 
the  prince  and  his  minister."  "  Now  you  see  what  a  revolution 
is,  if  it  is  taken  in  time,"  Metternich  once  joyfully  exclaimed 
to  the  emperor  of  Russia.  He  thought  that  all  the  affairs  of 
Europe  would  henceforth  be  managed  by  congresses,  at  which 
Austria  would  of  course  take  the  lead  and  decide  the  fate  of 
the  nations.  The  congress  of  Verona  (1822)  was  especially 
directed  against  the  revolution  in  Spain,  and  this  time  the 
France  of  the  Restoration  became  the  instrument  of  Austrian 
policy,  and  gained  the  honour  of  being  the  executioner  of  the 
decrees  of  the  Holy  Alliance  against  Spain.  This  congress 
also  decided  that  the  Austrians  should  evacuate  Piedmont,  and 
should  maintain  only  a  small  garrison  in  the  kingdom  of 
Naples.  In  both  these  states  the  reaction  had  been  terrible, 
and  Austria  had  become  an  object  of  horror  to  the  Italians. 
The  cry,  ^^ Fuori  t  tedesc/ii"  ("Away  with  the  Germans!") 
became  the  watchword  of  the  patriots.  These  "  Germans  " 
were  for  the  most  part  Magyars,  Slovenes,  Servians,  Poles, 
and  Chekhs,  the  unconscious  instruments  of  a  policy  of 
oppression  of  which  they  also  were  the  victims. 

The  Eastern  Question  (182 0-1829). 

The  friendly  relations  of  Austria  and  Russia,  attested  by 
so  many  instances  of  joint  action,  was  soon,  however,  to  receive 
a  rude  shock  from  the  Eastern  question,  that  question  which 
seems  likely  to  prove  the  despair  of  diplomatists.  General 
attention  had  been  attracted  to  Greece  by  the  first  beginning 
of  the  Hellenic  insurrection.  The  former  struggles  of  Austria 
against  the  Porte,  her  close  neighbourhood  to  Turkey,  and  the 


4/2  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO- HUNGARY. 

race-affinities  of  her  inhabitants,  all  seemed  to  point  to  her  as 
the  protectress  of  the  Turkish  Christians  and  the  future 
possessor  of  any  Christian  province  which  might  be  separated 
from  Turkey.  The  successor  to  the  kings  of  Hungary  could 
bring  forward  claims  on  Bosnia  and  Bulgaria  which  were  at 
least  as  good  as  those  which  she  had  succeeded  in  enforcing 
in  the  case  of  Galicia.  But,  unfortunately  for  Austria,  she  had 
been  too  much  occupied  with  western  affairs  for  the  last 
century  or  two  to  take  proper  care  of  her  interests  in  the  east, 
or  to  carry  out  the  policy  which  her  geographical  position 
seemed  to  impose  upon  her.  Joseph  II.  had  announced  "  that 
he  was  going  to  avenge  humanity,  and  purge  the  earth  of  the 
barbarians  who  had  so  long  been  its  scourge."  But  he  died 
before  he  could  carry  out  this  dream,  and  whilst  Austria  had 
been  absorbed  by  her  struggles  against  the  French  revolution, 
the  influence  of  Russia  had  gradually  spread  over  the  peninsula, 
among  her  Slav  kinsfolk  and  her  brethren  of  the  Orthodox 
faith. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  (1804-1815), 
the  Servians  had  risen  against  the  Turks,  driven  them  out,  and 
formed  an  independent  principality  on  the  borders  of  Hungary. 
The  Greeks — both  those  dwelling  in  ancient  Hellas,  and  those 
who  were  scattered  along  the  coasts  of  the  ^gean  Sea  and  the 
banks  of  the  Danube — next  began  to  dream  of  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  their  race.  Metternich  and  his  master  felt  that  they 
were  not  strong  enough  to  carry  out  the  plans  of  Joseph  II., 
and  were  well  aware  they  could  not  attack  Turkey  unless  they 
first  of  all  abandoned  that  guardianship  of  the  peace  of  Europe 
to  which  they  laid  claim.  Besides,  they  were  in  the  habit  of 
looking  upon  all  nations  who  dared  to  think  of  freedom  as 
their  enemies,  and  as  such  would  have  willingly  fought  against 
the  Greeks.  But  their  great  difficulty  was  how  to  help  the 
sultan  without  wounding  the  feelings  of  the  czar  Alexander, 
who  had  imbibed  humanitarian  ideas  and  was  favourable  to 
Greece.  At  the  congress  of  Laybach,  Metternich  had  taken 
great  pains  to  show  the  czar  how  dangerous  it  would  prove  to 


INSURRECTION  OF  THE   GREEKS.  4/3 

Europe  should  the  revolutionists  all  make  common  cause 
together. 

On  the  29th  of  March,  1821,  the  official  gazette  of  Vienna 
ostentatiously  announced  that  the  emperor  Alexander  by  no 
means  approved  of  the  enterprise  of  prince  Upsilanti,  that  he 
had  caused  his  name  to  be  struck  off  from  the  lists  of  the 
Russian  army,  and  that  he  had  given  instructions  to  his  am- 
bassador at  Constantinople  to  disown  all  sympathy  with  pro- 
jects intended  to  disturb  the  peace  of  the  Ottoman  empire. 
An  occasion  soon  offered  for  the  Viennese  cabinet  to  show 
what  were  the  sentiments  that  animated  it  towards  Turkey 
and  the  Greeks.  Upsilanti  crossed  the  frontier  of  Transyl- 
vania ;  he  was  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison,  and  most  of 
the  boyars  who  had  been  his  accomplices  were  confined 
within  the  limits  of  their  own  estates  (August,  182 1).  Diplo- 
matic relations  between  Russia  and  the  Porte  were  soon 
afterwards  interrupted,  the  Porte  accusing  the  cabinet  at  St. 
Petersburg  of  favouring  the  rebels.  Metternich  and  his  master 
were  able  to  see  nothing  in  the  Greeks  but  subjects  who  had 
revolted  against  their  lawful  sovereign,  but  the  cause  of  the 
Hellenes  found  enthusiastic  champions  even  among  bigoted 
legitimists,  men  who  were  influenced  by  their  classical  educa- 
tion, and  many  of  whom  thought  that  Austria  might  have 
covered  herself  with  glory  had  she  taken  part  in  the  expulsion 
of  the  Turks,  liberated  the  oppressed  peoples,  and  created  a 
strong  maritime  power  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean. 

Metternich,  however,  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  such 
projects,  though  he  dare  not  publicly  avow  the  real  reason  for 
his  policy,  which  was  a  dread  of  Russia.  He  once  owned  that 
"  the  Greek  insurrection  had  been  the  most  disagreeable  inci- 
dent of  his  whole  tenure  of  office."  The  emperor  Alexander 
had  had  entire  confidence  in  the  Austrian  alliance ;  he  thought 
his  services  to  Austria  in  Italian  affairs  had  deserved  gratitude, 
and  was  most  cruelly  disappointed  when  he  discovered  his 
mistake.  He  complained  bitterly  of  the  ingratitude  of  his 
allay.     "  Austria,"  says  a  Russian  despatch,  "  is  the  last  power 


474  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

from  whom  Russia  could  have  expected  what  she  has  received. 
Restored  to  his  throne  in  a  great  measure  by  the  efforts  of  the 
emperor  Alexander  and  the  Russian  army,  the  emperor 
Francis  had  accepted  immense  benefits  from  the  magnanimity 
of  his  greatest  ally."  The  mistaken  policy  of  Austria  at  this 
period  brought  her  neither  honour  nor  profit. 

Anxious  for  peace,  Metternich's  first  effort  was  to  enter  into 
an  understanding  with  England,  and  in  182 1,  when  on  a  visit 
to  Hanover,  he  met  Castlereagh  and  secured  his  co-operation. 
England  was  to  use  all  her  influence  at  St.  Petersburg,  and 
Austria  hers  at  Constantinople,  to  restore  moderation  to  men's 
minds.  At  first  Alexander  seemed  to  yield  to  the  influence  of 
Metternich,  and  the  Greek  delegates  who  presented  themselves 
at  the  congress  of  Verona  were  not  received.  In  1823,  the 
two  sovereigns  met  at  Lemberg,  and  about  the  same  time 
Metternich  had  an  interview  with  Nesselrode.  Unfortunately, 
however,  for  Metternich's  wishes,  the  Greeks  gained  ground, 
and  Alexander,  in  spite  of  the  influence  of  the  Austrian 
minister,  would  neither  sacrifice  the  interests  of  Russia  nor  give 
up  his  romantic  and  humanitarian  ideas.  In  1824,  a  conference 
was  held  at  St.  Petersburg  whose  object  was  the  pacification  of 
Greece,  but  though  Austria  took  part  in  it,  all  she  did  was  to 
retard  business  and  delay  any  definite  decision.  The  death  of 
Alexander  I.  (ist  December,  1825)  made  no  change  in  the 
position  of  affairs,  Nicholas  showing  himself  disposed  to  settle 
the  questions  of  the  Danubian  Provinces  and  the  alteration 
of  boundaries  in  a  friendly  way  with  Turkey.  At  one  time 
Austrian  diplomacy  seemed  as  if  it  were  about  to  succeed  in 
putting  an  end  to  the  disturbance.  "  The  hopes  of  that 
faction  which  is  the  enemy  of  public  peace  are  destroyed." 
Exclaimed  the  Augsburg  Gazette,  "  All  princes  ought  to  unite 
to  crush  the  revolution  under  whatsoever  form  it  may  present 
itself;  they  ought  to  give  up  all  temporary  advantages  and  hold 
firm  to  the  Holy  Alliance.  Every  statesman  who  shall  abandon 
that  course  is  an  enemy  of  both  thrones  and  nations.  The 
greatest  statesman  of  Europe,  the  man  whose  wise  counsels 


BATTLE   OF  NAVARINO.  475 

have  so  often  secured  peace,  who  has  always  remained  equal 
to  every  occasion,  who  has  never  been  tempted  to  leave  the 
right  way  by  the  attacks  of  his  enemies,  has  once  more  defeated 
the  hopes  of  the  Liberals." 

But  at  the  very  moment  when  Metternich  received  or  even, 
perhaps,  dictated  this  praise,  and  when  he  believed  himself  the 
master  of  all  Europe,  he  was  completely  tricked  by  Russia  and 
England.  A  protocol  was  signed  in  London  on  the  4th  of 
April,  1826,  in  which  these  two  powers  took  upon  themselves 
to  put  an  end  to  the  Greek  revolution,  and  in  the  following 
July  they  were  joined  by  France.  England  had  already  recog- 
nized the  Greeks  as  belligerents,  and  even  the  cabinet  of  Vienna 
had  been  obliged  to  admit  that  they  had  the  right  to  capture 
Austrian  vessels  carrying  contraband  of  war.  Austria  had  been 
punished  for  her  ambiguous  attitude  by  the  loss  her  commerce 
had  sustained  in  the  Levant,  Greek  corsairs  attacking  her 
merchant-vessels  in  preference  to  all  others,  and  in  the  year 
1826  capturing  as  many  as  two  hundred  of  them. 

The  battle  of  Navarino  (1827)  struck  the  last  blow  to  the 
chancellor's  hopes.  Europe  made  common  cause  with  the 
revolutionists,  and  at  last  (April,  1828)  war  broke  out  between 
Russia  and  Turkey.  It  caused  immense  terror  in  Vienna, 
where  every  one  was  convinced — as  Genz  wrote  to  Lord  Stan- 
hope— that  the  czar  would  march  right  up  to  Constantinople. 
Austria  was  without  financial  resources,  and  her  generals, 
grown  old  in  times  of  peace,  were  quite  incapable  of  managing 
a  campaign.  France  showed  herself  hostile,  Charles  X.  saying, 
"  If  the  emperor  Nicholas  attacks  Austria,  I  shall  hold  myself 
in  readiness  and  act  according  to  circumstances;  but  if  Austria 
begins  the  attack,  I  shall  at  once  march  against  her."  For- 
tunately for  her,  Russia  met  with  greater  difficulties  between  the 
Danube  and  the  Balkans  than  had  been  expected.  The  war 
lasted  for  nearly  two  years,  and  ended  in  the  treaty  of  Adria- 
nople  (15th  September,  1829),  which  recognized  the  indepen- 
dence of  Greece,  placed  the  Danubian  Provinces  under  the 
influence  of  Russia,  and  left  in  her  hands  the  mouths  of  the 


476  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Danube,  with  the  control  over  the  commerce  of  the  river  which 
such  a  position  implies. 


Polish,  Italian,  and  German  Affairs. 

The  defeat  of  Turkey  was  a  great  misfortune  for  Austria. 
The  credit  of  the  Viennese  cabinet  was  shaken,  and  its  influ- 
ence over  Europe  seriously  diminished.  Even  diplomatists 
began  openly  to  blame  the  narrowness  of  view  which  led 
Francis,  Metternich,  and  their  ministers  to  declare  themselves 
the  friends  of  any  sovereign  who  announced  himself  the  enemy 
of  modern  ideas,  such  as  duke  Charles  of  Brunswick  and  Don 
Miguel  of  Portugal.  When  the  constitution  -was  declared  in 
Lisbon  in  1821,  the  Austrian  ambassador  refused  to  illuminate 
his  house,  for  even  on  the  distant  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  a  con- 
stitution seemed  a  danger  to  Francis  II.  The  establishment 
of  parliamentary  government  in  France  had  been  looked  upon 
with  grave  uneasiness,  and  the  minds  of  Austrian  reactionaries 
had  been  disturbed  by  the  feeble  echoes  of  parliamentary 
eloquence.  When,  therefore,  the  news  of  the  revolution  of 
1830  reached  Vienna,  the  terror  it  inspired  may  be  imagined. 
If  Austria  had  been  provided  at  the  time  with  money  and 
soldiers,  war  might  have  broken  out ;  as  it  was,  she  had  to  make 
the  best  of  a  bad  bargain  and  to  recognize  the  government  of 
Louis  Philippe.  Next  came  the  revolutions  of  Brussels  and 
Warsaw.  Austria  had  grown  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  the  Low 
Countries,  but  events  in  Poland  touched  her  interests  more 
closely.  Not  long  before,  at  the  congress  of  Vienna,  Metternich 
had  protested  against  the  cession  of  the  grand-duchy  of  Warsaw 
to  Russia.  That  secret  hatred  of  Russia,  which  had  been 
nourished  ever  since  the  Turkish  war,  was  far  from  being 
appeased,  and  when  disturbances  broke  out  in  Galicia,  Hungary 
in  alarm  declared  her  future  compromised  by  the  development 
of  the  Muscovite  nation  and  called  for  an  armed  intervention 
in  favour  of  Poland.  The  Slavs  also  were  excited  by  the  idea 
of  a  war  between  their    brother   Slavs  ;    while    the  Germans 


AFFAIRS  IJV  POLAND    AND  ITALY.  ^"JJ 

themselves,  some  from  their  Liberal  opinions  and  others  from 
their  religious  convictions,  were  favourable  to  the  revolution. 
The  action  of  the  Austrian  cabinet  was  as  blundering  in  the 
Polish  question  as  it  had  been  mean  in  regard  to  the  Eastern 
question.  Francis  placed  a  body  of  troops  on  the  Galician 
frontier  to  prevent  the  insurgents  from  entering  Austrian  terri- 
tory, and  he  forbade  the  exportation  of  arms  into  Poland  (25th 
December,  1830),  but  he  allowed  his  minister  to  continue  to 
reside  at  Warsaw,  although  Prussia,  with  more  strict  observance 
of  diplomatic  forms,  recalled  hers.  He  did  not  announce  his 
intention  of  interfering,  as  he  had  done  in  Italy  and  Spain, 
against  the  rebels,  and  Genz  was  allowed  to  express  sentiments 
of  generous  sympathy  with  them  in  the  Augsburg  Gazette.  In 
the  political  circles  of  Vienna  the  placing  of  an  Austrian  arch- 
duke on  the  throne  of  Poland  was  urgently  discussed,  and  when 
the  struggle  was  at  its  height  Metternich  offered  his  mediation, 
only  to  meet  with  refusal  on  the  part  of  Russia. 

Meanwhile  affairs  in  Italy  demanded  instant  attention.  The 
I^egations  and  the  Marches  had  already  thrown  off  the  papal 
authority,  and  in  the  first  days  of  February,  1831,  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Modena  and  Parma  rose  against  their  Austrian  rulers. 
Austria  had  no  money  with  which  to  make  war ;  her  finances 
were  in  so  wretched  a  condition  that  the  relative  value  of  paper- 
money  to  coin,  which  had  been  one  to  five,  in  1831  fell  to  one 
to  ten.  Francis,  however,  dare  not  leave  Italy  alone  ;  he  was 
always  in  fear  lest  the  revolution  should  spread  to  Lombardy 
and  Venetia,  and  these  fertile  provinces  were  his  best  sources 
of  revenue,  producing  each  year  from  fifty-seven  to  fifty-eight 
million  of  francs.  The  Austrian  troops  therefore  entered 
Modena  and  Parma,  and  proceeded  to  occupy  the  Legations, 
but  these  they  were  obliged  to  abandon  in  consequence  of  the 
protestations  of  France.  The  following  year  a  new  insurrection 
broke  out  there,  and  the  papal  government  asked  the  Austrians 
to  return.  France  immediately  replied  by  the  occupation  of 
Ancona,  and  it  was  in  vain  that  Metternich  complained  that 
France  had  violated  the  rights  of  nations. 


478  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Thus  Austria  was  always  making  a  wrong  choice,  clutching 
hold  of  Italy,  which  detested  and  would  have  nothing  to  do 
Avith  her,  and  leaving  Poland  to  her  fate — Poland,  which  would 
have  accepted  her  rule  with  enthusiasm  had  the  heir  of  the 
Jagellons  of  Bohemia  and  Hungary  only  been  wise  enough  to 
arouse  memories  of  the  past  and  the  ancient  alliance  of  the 
three  kingdoms,  and  had  he  at  the  same  time  appealed  to  the 
Catholic  sentiments  of  the  Poles. 

Austrian  influence  still  remained  strong  in  Germany,  but 
the  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  time  found  its  best  ally  in  the 
multiplicity  of  principalities  and  powers  which  divided  the 
land.  Metternich  often  groaned  over  the  feebleness  of  govern- 
ments which  allowed  their  people  to  impose  laws  upon  them, 
and  on  the  errors  of  nations  which  were  carried  away  by  the 
example  of  the  revolution  of  July,  "  out  of  a  spirit  of  imitation, 
copying  events  which  had  taken  place  in  foreign  countries, 
whose  history  and  character  were  quite  different  from  those 
of  their  German  fatherland."  Those  rulers  who  found  them- 
selves called  upon  to  make  humiliating  concessions  gladly 
turned  for  assistance  to  the  powerful  chancellor,  and  he,  by 
the  help  of  the  Austrian  ambassadors,  was  able  to  exercise 
over  them  the  authority  of  a  guardian.  Springer  cleverly 
says,  "  The  cabinets  of  Vienna  treated  all  the  neighbouring 
states  as  if  they  were  an  esplanade,  on  which  no  one  might 
build,  lest  the  fortress  should  suffer."  Meanwhile,  the  three 
northern  courts  were  drawn  more  closely  together  by  fresh 
congresses,  similar  to  those  held  at  Laybach  and  Troppau. 
The  king  of  Prussia  and  the  emperor  Nicholas  met  Francis  II. 
in  Bohemia,  and  a  treaty,  signed  on  the  15th  of  March,  1834, 
confirmed  the  alliance — perhaps  it  would  be  nearer  the  truth 
to  say  the  conspiracy — of  the  three  sovereigns.  No  political 
refugee  was  to  find  shelter  within  the  three  kingdoms,  and  each 
state  undertook  to  deliver  up  all  proscribed  persons.  Thus  did 
the  three  powers  take  precautions  against  the  wind  of  liberty 
which  blew  towards  them  from  France.  If  the  French  govern- 
ment  should   prove   unable   to  suppress   revolutionary   plots 


FINANCIAL  DIFFICULTIES  OF  AUSTRIA.  479 

against  foreign  countries  contrived  on  French  territory,  the 
three  monarchs  reserved  to  themselves  the  right  to  interfere. 
On  the  occasion  of  this  declaration,  the  duke  de  Broglio  sent 
a  dry  and  dignified  despatch,  to  which  Metternich  made  a 
miserable  reply.  If  war  had  really  broken  out  at  this  time, 
Austria  would  have  cut  but  a  sorry  figure.  She  was  in  great 
financial  straits,  and,  notwithstanding  all  the  efforts  of  Francis 
and  his  minister  to  stifle  every  sign  of  political  life  among  the 
people,  grave  problems  were  debated  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
empire. 

Austria  had  paid  dearly  for  the  glorious  position  of  arbitress 
of  Europe  and  restorer  of  legitimate  sovereignty.  The  patent 
issued  in  181 1  had  practically  proclaimed  the  bankruptcy  of 
the  government,  and  the  issue  of  forty-five  millions  of  Antici- 
patio7ischeine  in  181 3  had  not  succeeded  in  raising  the  value 
of  her  paper-money.  Stadion  had  been  chosen  to  reorganize 
the  finances,  and  he  found  a  difficult  task  before  him.  The 
cost  of  the  war  of  18 15  had  been  met  by  a  loan  of  fifty 
millions,  but  this  had  brought  the  state  scarcely  more  than 
forty  millions.  Taxation  was  exceedingly  heavy.  It  is  true 
that  Austria  had  received  nearly  fifty  millions  of  florins  as  a  war 
indemnity,  but  England  had  demanded  payment  of  the  various 
subsidies  which  she  had  advanced  since  the  beginning  of  hostili- 
ties, and  that  sum  had  risen,  from  1792  to  1814,  to  ;!£"r  1,051,547. 
A  new  loan  was  needed  to  pay  off  this  debt,  which  the  Austrian 
statesmen  would  have  gladly  forgotten.  Stadion  elaborated  a 
plan  which  was  to  cure  everything.  No  more  paper-money  was 
to  be  forced  into  circulation,  and  a  National  Bank  of  Austria 
was  to  be  established,  which  was  to  administer  a  sinking  fund, 
supplied  by  the  war  indemnity.  But  the  notes  of  this  bank 
were  refused,  and  fell  into  the  hands  of  stock-jobbers  ;  and 
other  expedients  had  to  be  tried,  and  new  loans  raised  to  pay 
old  ones.  It  was  at  this  time  that  the  famous  banking-houses  of 
Vienna,  the  Barings,  Laboucheres,  Parishes,  and,  above  all,  the 
Rothschilds,  took  their  rise  and  began  to  dictate  to  every 
European   capital.      As    has    been  justly   remarked,   Vienna 


480  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARV. 

became  the  centre  of  a  financial  aristocracy  which  administered 
the  whole  European  public  debt  as  if  it  were  its  estate. 

Hungary  never  lent  herself  willingly  to  any  rational  system 
of  taxation,  and  down  to  the  year  1827,  custom-houses  were  to 
be  found  along  the  frontiers  of  every  province  in  the  monarchy, 
and  the  prohibitive  system  paralyzed  all  industries.  From  an 
economical  point  of  view,  the  most  important  event  of  the 
reign  of  Francis  II.  was  the  establishment  of  the  Austrian 
Lloyd  at  Trieste,  which  has  become  an  important  marine  navi- 
gation company. 

We  have  already  said  something  of  the  system  of  repression 
which  weighed  upon  every  one.  An  inquisitorial  police  watched 
over  the  lives  of  the  citizens,  and  the  censorship  of  the  press 
interfered  with  every  expression  of  opinion.  Liberty  of  con- 
science was  subject  to  most  annoying  restrictions ;  public 
education  was  placed  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  clergy,  and 
no  one  was  allowed  to  study  in  a  foreign  university ;  and  the 
central  government  persisted  in  refusing  to  recognize  the 
political  powers  of  the  diets.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this, 
public  opinion  was  working  its  way  towards  freedom  with 
irresistible  energy. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

HUNGARY    AND    THE    SLAV    COUNTRIES    (179O-1835). 

Himgary  frofti  1790- 1815. 

At  the  time  of  the  death  of  Joseph  II.  Hungary  was  in  a 
state  of  violent  disturbance.  The  comitat  of  Pesth  proclaimed 
that  the  rule  of  the  Habsburgs  was  at  an  end,  and  others 
threatened  to  do  the  same  unless  the  national  liberties  were 
restored  by  the  new  sovereign.  All  united  in  demanding  the 
convocation  of  the  diet  in  order  that  the  long-suppressed 
wishes  of  the  people  might  be  heard.  The  revolutionary 
wind  which  had  passed  over  France  had  been  felt  even  by 
the  Magyars,  but  there  was  this  great  difference  in  its  effect 
upon  France  and  upon  Hungary — in  France,  ideas  of  equality 
had  guided  the  revolution  ;  in  Hungary,  the  great  nobles  and 
the  squirearchy  who  formed  the  only  political  element  claimed, 
under  the  name  of  liberties,  privileges  which  were  for  the  most 
part  absolutely  opposed  to  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  of  1789. 
"  Some  of  the  comitats,"  says  M.  Sayous,  "  declared  that  it 
was  not  the  peasants  who  had  any  reason  to  complain  of  the 
conduct  of  their  lords,  but  rather  the  lords  of  the  serfs,  and 
that  instead  of  passing  laws  to  make  serfdom  less  harsh,  a 
return  to  the  strict  rules  of  ancient  times  was  needed.  Others 
dogmatically  declared  that  Providence  had  willed  that  there 
should  always  be  kings,  nobles,  and  serfs."  Among  the  late 
reforms  only  one  had  found  favour  in  the  eyes  of  the  Magyars, 
and  that  was  toleration  towards  Protestants,  and  the  reason  of 

2  I 


482  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

ihis  was  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  small  landowners  of 
Hungary  were  themselves  to  a  large  extent  Protestant ;  yet  a 
democratic  party  was  gradually  coming  into  existence  which 
appealed  to  the  masses. 

It  was  under  such  circumstances  that  Leopold  II.  deter- 
mined to  convoke  the  diet.  A  preliminary  meeting  was  held 
in  the  castle  of  Buda.  "  O  blessed  day,  day  of  resurrection  !  " 
cries  the  poet  Baroti.  "I  hear  the  old  language,  the  old 
costumes  rejoice  my  eyes."  And  Peczely,  another  poet,  says, 
"  We  swear  that  so  long  as  the  blood  of  Attila  flows  in  our 
veins,  so  long  as  the  name  of  Magyar  remains,  this  day  shall 
be  blessed  in  our  memories."  As  was  sure  to  be  the  case, 
the  nobles  had  a  majority  in  both  chambers.  Grave  recrimi- 
nations were  to  be  heard  the  moment  the  session  opened. 
Some  of  the  orators  accused  the  king  of  treason ;  others 
claimed  an  independent  position  for  Hungary  as  regarded 
foreign  affairs,  and  demanded  that  a  Magyar  ambassador 
should  be  sent  to  Constantinople.  They  even  went  so  far 
as  to  ask  that  only  Magyar  regiments  should  be  quartered 
within  the  national  frontiers  in  time  of  peace,  and  that  they 
should  be  commanded  solely  by  native  officers. 

Leopold  II.  took  refuge  behind  the  Pragmatic  Sanction, 
and  refused  to  recognize  any  other  contract  between  himself 
and  Hungary;  but  he  ended  by  getting  himself  crowned  on 
the  15th  of  November,  1790.  He  restored  the  office  of 
palatine ;  but  the  diet  chose  his  son,  the  young  archduke 
Alexander,  for  the  post,  and  it  was  evident  that  the  office 
was  now  nothing  more  than  a  name,  and  that  there  was  but 
small  chance  of  the  young  archduke  maintaining  the  rights 
of  the  kingdom  against  his  father.  These  various  concessions; 
however,  were  enough  to  fill  the  Magyars  with  delight  after  the 
harsh  reign  of  Joseph  II.  "  My  beautiful  Fatherland,"  sang 
Peczely,  "  thou  hast  a  king  whom  the  whole  universe  envies 
thee  ! "  The  laws  which  were  adopted  by  the  diet  sum  up 
well  the  wishes  of  the  country.  The  coronation  of  the 
sovereign  must  take  place  at  latest  within  six  months  after  his 


CONDITION  OF  THE  PEASANIS  IN  HUNGARY.      483 

accession ;  the  crown  of  St.  Stephen  must  always  remain  at 
Buda  ;  the  king  must  from  time  to  time  reside  in  the  country  ; 
Hungarian  affairs  must  be  settled  with  the  help  of  Hungarian 
counsellors  alone  ;  the  laws  of  the  other  states  were  not  to 
be  applied  to  Hungary  ;  the  diet  must  be  summoned  at  least 
every  three  years,  and  it  alone  must  possess  legislative 
power,  manage  the  finances  of  the  country,  and  levy  troops. 
These  important  measures  were  completed  by  a  law  for  liberty 
of  conscience  more  liberal  even  than  that  of  Joseph  H. 

The  question  of  the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the 
lower  classes,  the  peasants,  serfs,  Servians  of  the  Banat,  and 
citizens  of  free  cities,  was  more  difficult  to  settle.  The  nobles 
were  little  inclined  to  deprive  themselves  of  any  of  their 
privileges,  and  in  this  matter  it  was  Leopold  who  represented 
liberal  ideas.  The  diet  granted  the  peasants  the  right  of 
changing  their  residence,  but  refused  the  abolition  of  corporal 
punishment.  The  inhabitants  of  the  towns  were  most  of 
them  of  foreign  origin,  and  had  always  been  looked  upon  with 
suspicion  ;  they  had  adopted  the  principles  of  the  French 
Revolution,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  by  means  of  them  access 
to  public  employment  and  real  representation  in  the  diet,  and 
the  king  tried  to  reconcile  their  interests  with  those  of  the 
nobles.  He  also  protected  the  Servians,  and  allowed  them  to 
meet  in  congress  for  the  discussion  of  Servian  interests ; 
established  a  Servian  chancery,  in  spite  of  the  objections  of 
some  of  the  Magyars,  who  dreaded  the  dismemberment  of 
the  kingdom  ;  and  recognized  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church. 
Death  carried  off  Leopold  IL  when  he  was  at  the  height  of 
his  popularity. 

When  France  declared  war  against  Francis  H.  the  Magyar 
nobles  showed  themselves  quite  ready  to  support  their 
sovereign  ;  they  asked  for  nothing  better  than  to  fight  the 
revolutionary  democrats  of  Paris.  Francis  was  crowned  very 
soon  after  his  accession,  and  was  able  to  obtain  both  men 
and  money  from  the  diet ;  but  before  long,  the  reactionary 
measures  carried   by  Thugut   his    minister,   lost  him  all   the 


484  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

popularity  which  had  greeted  him  at  the  beginning  of  his 
reign.  The  censorship  of  the  press,  the  employment  of  spies, 
and  the  persecution  of  the  Protestants — a  persecution,  how- 
ever, in  which  the  Hungarian  Catholics  themselves  took  an 
active  part — all  helped  to  create  discontent. 

The  policy  of  the  court  being  thus  reactionary,  the  Magyar 
Jacobins  tended  to  become  the  representatives  of  the  senti- 
ment of  nationality.  Adherents  of  the  French  Revolution 
multiplied  in  the  land,  and  some  of  them — as,  for  example, 
Martinovics,  Hajndczy,  Laczkovics,  and  Szentmariai,  who  was 
the  author  of  a  political  catechism  for  the  spread  of  French 
doctrines — were  arrested,  and  were  found  to  have  numerous 
accomplices.  Fifty  citizens  accused  of  high  treason  were 
thrown  into  the  fortress  of  Buda.  It  was  difficult  to  prove  the 
existence  of  any  plot,  but  the  writings  of  the  accused  showed, 
at  any  rate,  that  they  held  opinions  hostile  to  monarchy  and 
aristocracy ;  one  among  them,  Bacsany  by  name,  had  even 
translated  the  "  Marseillaise."  They  were  brought  to  Vienna 
to  be  tried;  but  the  Hungarians  protested,  and  they  had  to 
be  sent  back  to  Buda,  where,  however,  the  trial  was  so 
conducted  that  their  condemnation  was  certain.  Five  of  them 
were  put  to  death  on  the  scaffold  (20th  of  May,  1795),  and 
the  others  were  imprisoned  in  the  fortress  of  Kufstein  in 
Tyrol.  Many  of  their  publications  were  burned  by  the  exe- 
cutioner, and  among  them  the  translation  of  the  "  Marseil- 
laise." Bacsany  was  among  the  prisoners  who  were  sent  to 
Kufstein,  and  there  the  translator  of  the  revolutionary  hymn 
atoned  for  his  imprudence  by  nine  years  of  captivity. 

Meanwhile  Hungary  was  taking  its  part  in  the  wars  against 
France,  and  important  posts  in  the  Austrian  army  were  held  by 
Magyar  nobles,  among  whom  Austria  found  some  of  her  best 
generals,  as,  for  instance,  Alvinzy.  In  1796,  the  diet  voted  all 
that  was  asked  for — 50,000  soldiers,  20,000  oxen,  and  2,400,000 
measures  of  corn  with  which  to  feed  them.  Her  poets 
encouraged  their  countrymen  during  the  war,  and  compared 
the  soldiers  to  the  warriors  of  Hunyadi  and  Arpad.     By  the 


i 


SELFISHNESS  OF  MAGYAR  NOBLES.  485 

time  that  the  peace  of  Campo-Formio  was  signed,  Hungary- 
had  lost  more  than  100,000  men  and  30  milUons  of  florins. 

In  the  campaigns  which  followed  history  mentions  among 
the  Hungarians  the  names  of  Kray,  Jach,  Ott,  Palfify,  Splenyi, 
Haddik,  and  Esterhazy.  The  Hungarian  generals  covered 
themselves  with  glory,  but  their  land,  deprived  of  men  and 
money,  and  badly  cultivated,  was  reduced  to  a  state  of  terrible 
misery.  Foreign  affairs  had  made  men  forget  the  true  interests 
of  the  kingdom,  and  the  diet  of  1796  had  only  busied  itself 
with  questions  concerning  subsidies  and  soldiers. 

The  diet  of  1802  found  things  in  a  most  critical  state. 
It  ought  to  have  been  its  first  duty  to  reform  the  system  of 
customs  throughout  the  land,  as  they  interfered  most  seriously 
with  the  economical  interests  of  the  people.  But  quite 
another  question  occupied  the  Austrian  government.  It  asked 
that  the  army  should  be  maintained  in  complete  fighting  order 
in  time  of  peace,  and  that  a  supplementary  vote  of  one  million 
florins  should  be  granted.  The  troops  furnished  by  Hungary 
were  composed  of  two  bodies,  the  regiments  and  the  insurrec- 
tion, a  body  of  cavalry  raised  among  the  nobles  at  the  outbreak 
of  a  war.  The  government  wished  to  strengthen  the  regular 
army  at  the  expense  of  the  insurrection,  and  wanted  the 
assembly  to  give  up  for  the  future  the  right  of  voting  the 
contingent.  It  failed  in  this,  but  it  obtained  six  thousand 
recruits  a  year  in  time  of  peace,  and  twelve  thousand  in  time 
of  war,  the  time  of  service  being  settled  at  twelve  years,  and  it 
also  secured  two  millions  for  the  war  budget.  The  same  diet 
tried  in  vain  to  have  Dalmatia  annexed  to  Hungary.  All  the 
debates  of  this  period  which  bear  upon  the  privileges  of  the 
nobles,  especially  in  the  matter  of  taxation  and  the  game  laws, 
show  how  a  selfish  aristocracy  clung  obstinately  to  its  privileges, 
and  how  little  it  had  been  affected  by  the  ideas  of  equality 
which  had  spread  from  France  over  the  rest  of  Europe.  This 
selfishness  of  the  governing  classes  proved  of  the  greatest  help 
to  the  kings  when  they  sought  to  keep  the  nobles  in  check 
by  the  aid  of  the  peasants  and  citizens.     While  steering  its 


486  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO' HUNGARY. 

course  carefully  as  regarded  the  diet,  the  government  still 
continued  its  Germanizing  policy.  It  granted  a  considerable 
yearly  payment  to  the  German  theatre  at  Pesth.  But  the  Hun- 
garians also  built  a  theatre,  and  opened  a  national  museum  ; 
and  their  national  poets,  Csokonai,  Verseghy,  Berzsenyi,  and, 
above  all,  the  immortal  Kisfaludy,  showed  that  the  Magyar 
tongue  could  be  adapted  to  the  noblest  forms  of  European 
poetry,  and  thus  secured  the  future  of  the  national  language. 

The  most  important  event  of  1802,  after  the  convocation 
of  the  diet,  was  the  creation  of  the  official  title  of  emperor  of 
Austria.  In  spite  of  the  assurances  of  Francis  that  he  meant 
to  make  no  change  in  the  position  of  his  various  kingdoms, 
the  Hungarians  felt  themselves  injured  by  the  new  title,  as 
implying  that  the  kingdom  of  St.  Stephen  was  in  future  to  hold 
a  place  subordinate  to  the  empire.  Notwithstanding  this,  how- 
ever, their  old  spirit  of  loyalty  prevailed,  and  when,  after  the  capi- 
tulation of  Ulm,  Napoleon  appeared  before  the  gates  of  Vienna, 
there  was  no  sacrifice  they  were  not  ready  to  make.  Napoleon 
was  the  representative  of  victorious  revolution,  and  the  Magyar 
nobles  were  ready  to  prove  their  fidelity  to  the  hereditary 
dynasty  in  the  face  of  all  his  successes.  "  This  is  the  moment 
of  thy  true  greatness,  O  Magyar,"  sang  the  poet  Berszenyi. 
"...  Thy  arm  in  battle  has  the  strength  of  a  giant.  Go  ! 
show  that  thou  hast  the  soul  of  Zrinyi ;  imitate  him  in  what 
was  his  highest  claim  to  glory — his  death."  But  the  diet  would 
not  consent  to  the  levy  en  masse  which  was  called  for  by  the 
government,  and  it  asked  for  some  new  concessions  in  favour 
of  the  national  language,  among  others,  permission  to  the 
comitats  to  correspond  with  the  central  government  in  Magyar. 
Before  long  the  frontiers  of  Hungary  lay  open  to  the  enemy ; 
Napoleon  was  in  Vienna,  and  French  troops  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Raab.  The  palatine  Joseph  thought  that  he  ought  not 
to  draw  down  on  the  country  all  the  horrors  of  an  invasion  ; 
he  therefore  retired  to  Buda-Pesth,  and  sent  the  holy  crown 
to  Munkacz,  leaving  general  Palffy  at  Pozaony  (Pressburg),  with 
orders  to  obtain  the  consent  of  the  French  to  the  neutrality 


DIET  OF  1807.  487 

of  Hungary.  Davoust  agreed  to  this  willingly,  and  contented 
himself  with  occupying  Pressburg,  without  taxing  its  inhabi- 
tants with  either  contributions  or  requisitions.  It  has  been 
proved  by  the  letters  of  Napoleon  at  this  time  that  he  caused 
an  inquiry  to  be  made  into  the  grievances  of  the  Hungarians 
against  the  Austrian  government,  hoping  to  make  use  of  them 
to  his  own  advantage. 

The  diet  of  1807  was  given  up  entirely  to  questions  of 
internal  government,  every  means  being  taken  to  obtain  the 
resources  that  were  needed  for  the  future  war.  It  was  pro- 
posed to  settle  once  for  all  what  number  of  troops  should  be 
permanently  kept  up,  and  that  an  extraordinary  tax  should  be 
granted  for  mihtary  needs.  The  lower  chamber  refused  a 
permanent  grant  of  troops,  and  maintained  the  right  of  Hun- 
gary to  raise  soldiers  only  when  she  wished,  and  as  many  as 
she  wished.  The  chamber  of  nobles  was  more  conciliatory, 
and  disposed  to  make  greater  sacrifices  of  money.  It  granted 
one-sixth  of  the  revenues  of  nobles,  merchants,  and  citizens, 
and  one  per  cent,  on  the  value  of  all  immovable  property. 
There  was  a  hard  struggle  over  the  question  of  the  permanent 
levies,  the  diet  being  most  unwilling  to  give  up  the  right  of 
determining  from  time  to  time  the  number  of  the  armed  force. 
It  was  usual,  when  the  contingent  had  been  voted,  for  it  to  be 
divided  among  the  towns  and  the  comttats,  and  the  troops 
were  got  together  in  a  somewhat  unsystematic  and  arbitrary 
fashion.  After  prolonged  debate,  twelve  thousand  conscripts 
and  a  sum  of  twenty  thousand  florins  for  the  encouragement 
of  voluntary  enlistment  were  granted  by  the  assembly.  The 
great  orator,  Paul  Nagy,  appeared  for  the  first  time  at  this 
debate,  and  spoke  noble  words  in  defence  of  the  national 
independence  and  the  Magyar  tongue.  In  spite  of  the  court, 
the  diet  energetically  defended  the  autonomy  of  Hungary 
within  her  own  borders. 

In  order  to  conciliate  the  Magyars,  Francis  II.  determined 
to  have  the  new  empress,  Maria  Louisa,  his  third  wife,  whom 
he  had  just  married,  crowned  queen  of  Hungary.     The  cere- 


4H8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

mony  always  excites  great  enthusiasm  among  the  Hungarians, 
and  the  dynasty  has  not  failed  to  turn  this  enthusiasm  to  its 
own  advantage.  At  the  same  time  a  strong  feeling  of  indigna- 
tion had  been  roused  among  the  Magyar  nobles  by  the  war  in 
Spain,  during  which  both  royal  rights  and  national  sentiments 
had  been  held  so  cheap  by  Napoleon. 

During   the   campaign   of    1809    the    diet   added    twenty 
thousand  conscripts  to  the  twelve  thousand  already  voted,  and 
decreed  the  hisurrcction.     The  nation  was  called  to  arms  by 
the  poets  Verseghy  and  Kisfaludy.     Enormous  sacrifices  were 
made  by  some  of  the  nobles,  prince  Esterhazy  supplying  two 
hundred  horses  to  the  army,  and  the  archbishop  of  Kalocsa 
one  hundred  and  twenty.     The  popular  enthusiasm  increased 
when  the  empress-queen  and  the  young  archduke,  heir  to  the 
throne,  left  Vienna,  which  was  threatened  by  the  enemy,  and 
took  refuge  in  the  imperial  castle  at  Buda.    Napoleon,  who  never 
understood  popular  feeling  in  Hungary,  believed  the  moment 
had  now  come  to  strike  a  heavy  blow  at  Austria  by  separating 
Hungary  from  her.     From  his  head-quarters  at  Schonbrunn  he 
addressed  a  proclamation  to  the  Hungarians  which  was  imme- 
diately spread  throughout  the  kingdom.     It  was  translated  by 
the  poet  Bacsanyi,  who,  during  his  imprisonment  at  Kufstein, 
had  become  acquainted  with  Maret,  then  ambassador  from  the 
French   republic,  who   had   been   arrested  by  the   Austrians. 
Maret,  now  duke  of  Bassano  and  one  of  Napoleon's  ministers, 
came  across  his  old  companion  in  captivity  in  Vienna,  and 
no  doubt  obtained  his  aid  in  the  composition  of  the  original 
as  well  as  in  the  translation. 

"  Hungarians  !  "  ran  the  proclamation,  "  it  is  the  emperor 
of  Austria,  and  not  the  king  of  Hungary,  who  has  declared  war 
against  me.  Your  constant  maintenance  of  a  defensive  posi- 
tion, and  the  measures  passed  by  your  last  diet,  testify  suffi- 
ciently to  your  desire  for  peace.  The  moment  has  come  in 
which  you  may  recover  your  independence.  I  offer  you  peace, 
the  integrity  of  your  land,  your  freedom,  and  your  constitution, 
either  as  it  now  exists  or  with  such  modifications  as  you  may 


NAPOLEON'S  PROCLAMATION  TO  HUNGARY.      489 

think  either  the  demands  of  the  age  or  the  welfare  of  your 
countrymen  render  advisable.  I  want  nothing  from  you.  I 
only  desire  to  see  your  nation  free  and  independent.  Your 
union  with  Austria  has  been  your  misfortune.  Your  blood 
has  been  shed  for  her  in  far  distant  lands,  and  your  dearest 
interests  have  been  continually  sacrificed  to  those  of  the 
Hereditary  Provinces.  You  form  the  finest  portion  of  her 
empire,  and  you  are  only  treated  as  a  province  that  can  be 
used  as  the  instrument  of  passions  to  which  you  are  strangers. 

"  You  have  national  customs  and  a  national  language  ;  you 
pride  yourselves  on  your  ancient  and  illustrious  origin.  Take 
again  your  position  as  a  nation.  Choose  a  king  for  yourselves 
who  shall  reign  for  you  alone,  who  shall  dwell  in  your  midst, 
who  shall  be  surrounded  only  by  your  citizens  and  your 
soldiers.  Hungarians,  this  is  what  all  Europe  who  is  watch- 
ing you  demands,  and  what  I  join  her  in  asking  of  you.  A 
lasting  peace,  commercial  relations,  and  a  secured  independence 
are  the  rewards  that  await  you  if  you  will  be  worthy  of  your 
ancestors  and  of  yourselves.  You  will  not  refuse  these  offers, 
so  liberal  and  so  generous ;  you  will  no  longer  shed  your  blood 
for  feeble  princes,  who  have  always  been  the  slaves  of  corrupt 
ministers  and  in  the  pay  of  England.  .  .  .  Assemble  in  your 
national  diets  on  the  field  of  Rakos,  as  your  ancestors  did 
before  you,  and  then  let  me  know  your  decision." 

But  notwithstanding  the  skill  with  which  it  was  drawn  up, 
this  proclamation  made  but  little  impression  in  Hungary. 
The  msiirrectio7i  rose  in  arms,  met  at  Raab  (Gyor),  and  then 
took  up  its  position  in  an  entrenched  camp,  under  the  com- 
mand of  the  archduke  John.  It  was  badly  equipped  and 
armed,  and  the  valour  of  the  Hungarian  cavalry  was  of  little 
use  among  the  inequalities  of  a  boggy  soil  and  against  the 
terrible  fire  of  the  French  artillery.  Gyor  was  taken,  and  the 
Austrians  did  not  spare  their  raillery  against  the  fine  gentle- 
men who  allowed  themselves  to  be  beaten  on  the  soil  of  their 
native  land.  After  this  defeat,  the  government  demanded 
forty   thousand    more    men    from    Hungary,   and    voluntary 


490  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

enlistment  soon  supplied  the  number,  which  went  to  reinforce 
the  army  of  the  archduke  Charles.  Besides  this,  the  country 
had  to  suffer  from  the  requisitions  as  well  as  the  military 
excesses  of  the  French,  whose  memory  is  by  no  means 
popular  in  the  country  of  the  Magyars.  By  the  treaty  of 
Vienna  some  parts  of  Croatia  were  detached  from  Hungary, 
and  this  loss  increased  the  popular  resentment. 

The  Hungarians  had  never  been  sparing  of  their  lives  in 
the  cause  of  Austria,  but  they  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
those  miserable  schemes  by  which  the  government  at  Vienna 
believed  itself  able  to  remedy  the  bad  state  of  its  finances. 
The  emperor,  supported  by  his  lieutenant,  the  palatine  Joseph, 
had  recourse  to  all  kinds  of  violent  measures.  The  recalci- 
trant deputies  were  summoned  ad  audiendutn  verbum  regiuni, 
and  one  of  them,  Joseph  Dessewffy,  was  excluded  from  the 
diet.  In  the  end,  however,  they  were  obliged  to  yield  to 
force.  The  Hungarians  were,  indeed,  had  always  been,  but 
ill  rewarded  by  Austria  for  their  fidelity,  but  they  nevertheless 
furnished  a  numerous  and  brave  contingent  to  the  campaign  of 
1813-1814.  They  fought,  but  it  was  not  with  the  old  enthu- 
siasm, and  poets  and  publicists  no  longer  celebrated  the  great 
duel  against  the  Tyrant  of  Europe  nor  the  victories  of  the 
Austrian  army. 

"  We  are  happy  in  the  victories  of  your  majesty,"  said  an 
address  to  Francis  ;  "  they  will  give  you  time  to  think  of  the 
welfare  of  your  subjects.  Up  to  this  time  dread  of  the  enemy 
has  made  all  our  wishes  of  no  effect."  Hungary  had  fought 
rather  for  the  dynasty  than  for  her  own  independence ;  she 
had  put  off  the  consideration  of  all  questions  touching  her  own 
essential  interests,  and  now  greeted  the  peace  with  joy,  in  the 
hope  that  at  last  the  sovereign  would  be  able  to  busy  himself 
with  the  affairs  of  his  faithful  Magyars — a  dream,  however, 
which  was  of  but  short  duration. 


PROTEST  OF  THE   CO  MIT  AT  OF  BARS.  49 1 

Development  of  Public  Spirit  in  Hungary — The  Diet  0/182^ — 
Szechenyi,  Deak,  Kossuth. 

After  the  year  181 5,  Francis  II.  for  some  time  refused  to 
convoke  tlie  diet.  While  poets  such  as  Kolcsey  and  Alex- 
ander and  Charles  Kisfaludy  were  recalling  the  memory  of  the 
ancient  glories  of  the  nation,  the  Viennese  government  was 
doing  its  best  to  stifle  political  sentiment  by  a  strict  censure  of 
the  press.  But  though  there  w-as  no  diet  to  interfere  with  its 
plans,  the  comitats  proved  a  hindrance.  That  of  Bars,  for 
instance,  gave  utterance  to  a  strong  protest.  "We  have  no 
doubt,"  it  said,  "  that  this  rigorous  censure  which  weighs 
down  our  literature  appears  of  great  use  to  his  majesty.  That 
ignorance  of  all  contemporary  events  which  we  owe  to  it  doubt- 
less renders  the  exercise  of  power  more  easy.  We  only  ask  if 
manly  minds  can  put  up  with  such  repression.  In  wdiat  way 
have  we  sinned  ?  Why  must  the  fountains  of  civilization  be 
closed  to  us  ?  Why  are  we  to  be  cut  off  from  the  society  of 
our  fellow-men  ?  " 

In  the  face  of  an  adversary  so  tenacious  of  its  rights  as  was 
the  Hungarian  aristocracy,  the  convocation  of  the  diet  could 
not  be  indefinitely  postponed.  The  royal  chancery  at  Pesth 
was  powerless  to  govern  without  the  aid  of  the  country  as  repre- 
sented in  the  diet,  and  the  archduke  Joseph,  who  had  been 
palatine  for  so  many  years,  had  himself  felt  the  influence  of 
the  Magyar  ideas  of  self-government.  Austria  wanted  soldiers 
for  the  occupation  of  Italy,  and  in  order  to  obtain  them  the 
king  first  tried  to  disarm  the  opposition  of  the  Hungarians  by 
flattery.  After  a  military  review,  which  took  place  in  1820, 
he  made  a  speech  in  which  occurred  the  following  words, 
which  have  since  become  famous  :  "  Totus  mundus  stultizat 
et,  relictis  antiquis  suis  legibus,  constitutiones  imaginarias 
quserit.  Vos  constitutionem  a  majoribus  acceptam  illcesam 
habetis ;  amatis  illam  et  ego  illam  amo  et  conservabo  et  ad 
Haeredes  transmittam."  But  this  declaration  did  not  have 
much   effect.     The   comitats   refused  to  pay  the  taxes  or  to 


492  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIUNGARY. 

raise  the  soldiers.  The  sovereign  then  replaced  the  Fo  /span 
(Obergespann)  by  royal  administrators  ;  but  it  was  of  no  use, 
the  body  of  the  comitats  resisted,  and  all  the  public  officers 
gave  in  their  resignation.  The  magistrates  refused  to  take  any 
steps  to  carry  out  the  prosecutions  for  treason  which  were 
ordered  by  the  government  of  Vienna ;  and  it  was  at  last 
evident  that  the  royal  authority  could  not  be  maintained  except 
by  means  of  the  national  parliament.  The  diet  of  1825-1829 
marks,  accordingly,  an  important  stage  in  the  constitutional 
history  of  Hungary.  It  met  at  Pozsony  on  the  nth  of  Sep- 
tember, 1825.  The  king's  speech  contained  a  sort  of  apology, 
and  he  undertook  once  more  to  preserve  the  constitution,  and 
to  transmit  it  intact  to  his  successors.  In  order  to  please  the 
people  he  again  made  use  of  the  ceremony  which  has  always 
had  so  great  an  effect  on  the  Hungarian  mind,  and  had  his 
fourth  wife,  Charlotte  of  Bavaria,  crowned  queen.  Among  the 
deputies  in  the  diet  of  1825  might  be  seen  in  the  upper  chamber 
Szechenyi,  who  had  been  named  by  his  countrymen  the  Great 
Magyar ;  and  in  the  lower  house,  Paul  Nagy,  whose  stormy 
eloquence  had  been  heard  in  earlier  assemblies,  and  also  a 
young  advocate  from  the  comitat  of  Zala,  named  Francis  Deak. 
The  debates  were  very  noisy,  and  the  court  probably  found 
the  chambers  less  docile  than  it  expected.  Time  was  taken 
up  by  a  series  of  recriminations  against  the  violent  actions  of 
government,  the  misdeeds  of  royal  officials,  the  attempts 
against  public  liberty,  and  the  long  delay  in  summoning  the 
national  representatives.  These  gravaini7ia  were  made  in 
speeches  full  of  wordy  eloquence,  and  in  the  doubtful  Latin 
which  was  still  used  in  the  Magyar  assemblies.  The  emperor 
had  to  listen  to  some  harsh  truths,  some  violent  speakers 
going  so  far  as  to  declare  the  house  of  Habsburg  the  here- 
ditary enemies  of  Hungary.  He  was  obliged  to  promise  satis- 
faction to  the  gravamhia,  and  to  declare  that  he  had  never 
had  any  intention  of  violating  the  constitution.  The  Hun- 
garians demanded  that  certain  territories,  such  as  Dalmatia, 
which,  in  virtue  of  historical  rights,  made  part  of  their  kingdom, 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MAGYAR  LANGUAGE.      493 

should  be  united  to  it  again ;  but  their  wishes  were  not 
attended  to.  The  financial  measures  of  181 1  and  18 16  were 
also  made  the  subjects  of  furious  debate. 

One  of  the  most  important  results  of  this  diet  was  the 
development  of  the  Magyar  language  and  literature.  Szechenyi 
used  the  national  tongue  in  debate,  and  subscribed  sixty 
thousand  florins  towards  the  foundation  of  the  Hungarian 
academy.  A  national  theatre  was  before  long  built  at  Pesth, 
No  less  able  as  a  writer  than  eloquent  as  an  orator,  Szechenyi 
undertook  to  make  economic  truths  known  to  his  countrymen, 
and  his  book  on  "  Credit "  marks  an  epoch  in  the  study  of  the 
science.  The  old  Magyar  world  was  at  last  shaken  by  the 
breath  of  modern  ideas,  and  the  years  which  followed  1830 
were  marked  by  the  construction  of  several  important  public 
works ;  the  bridge  at  Pesth  and  the  tunnel  at  Buda  were 
made,  and  the  course  of  the  river  Tisza  was  regulated. 

Francis  11.  had  his  successor,  the  archduke  Ferdinand, 
crowned  in  his  lifetime,  in  the  hope  of  attaching  the  Hun- 
garians more  strongly  to  the  dynasty.  After  the  revolution 
of  July  he  wanted  to  be  able  to  dispose  of  the  whole  strength 
of  Hungary,  and  convoked  a  diet  in  order  to  obtain  new 
levies  of  troops.  It  granted  him  twenty  thousand  men,  but 
they  were  only  to  be  raised  in  case  the  monarchy  should  be 
directly  attacked.  The  diet  of  1833  had  some  grave  questions 
to  solve  ;  the  subjects  under  discussion  were  not  now  only  the 
relative  position  of  the  crown  and  the  aristocracy,  the  taxes, 
and  the  constitution,  but  also  the  emancipation  of  the  peasant 
class,  and  the  economical  transformation  of  the  country. 

The  Magyar  nobles  had  often  made  generous  sacrifices  in 
the  defence  of  their  own  interests,  but  they  had  always  shown 
most  deplorable  selfishness  as  regarded  the  condition  of  the 
peasants,  and  had  thus  given  the  Austrian  government  plenty 
of  opportunity  to  play  the  part  of  the  peasants'  friend. 
Peasant  wars  had  more  than  once  devastated  the  provinces, 
and  even  as  late  as  183 1,  at  the  time  of  the  great  outbreak  of 
cholera,  the  peasants  in  the  comitat  of  Saros  had  put  some  of 


494  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO'HUNGARY. 

the  lords  to  death,  accusing  them  of  having  poisoned  the  wells. 
The  emperor  now  invited  the  diet  to  discuss  a  measure  of 
agrarian  reform,  the  basis  of  which  had  been  drawn  up  by 
himself.  The  upper  chamber,  however,  would  have  nothing 
to  do  with  its  liberal  concessions,  while  the  lower  chamber 
went  even  beyond  the  sovereign  in  the  reforms  they  proposed. 
The  debate  was  a  long  one,  for  the  nobles  of  Hungary  had  no 
wish  to  repeat  the  doings  of  the  French  constituent  assembly 
on  the  4th  of  August,  1789.^  Eloquent  speeches  were  made 
in  the  lower  chamber  by  Deak,  Balogh,  and  Kolczey,  on 
liberty  and  the  dignity  of  man,  but  it  was  not  until  after  two 
years  of  discussion  that  the  following  reforms  were  carried. 
The  peasants  were  no  longer  to  be  tried  before  the  seigneurial 
courts  in  which  the  lord  was  at  the  same  time  judge  and  party 
to  the  action ;  they  were  no  longer  to  be  arrested  at  his  com- 
mand ;  they  were  to  have  the  right  to  leave  their  land  and  to 
sell  their  interest  in  it,  or  to  become  complete  owners  of  it  by 
an  arrangement  with  the  lord,  without,  however,  completely 
putting  an  end  to  the  feudal  tie ;  and  they  were  no  longer  to 
bear  the  sole  cost  of  the  diets,  which,  up  to  this  date,  they  had 
had  to  do.  This  latter  was  the  first  step  towards  equality  of 
taxation — an  equality  which  had  always  been  especially  repug- 
nant to  the  old  Magyar  spirit.  It  was  looked  upon  as  a  great 
event  when  Szechenyi  was  able  to  insist  that  nobles  should  be 
obliged  to  pay  the  same  toll  as  every  one  else  on  crossing  the 
new  bridge  of  Buda-Pesth.  The  supreme  judge  of  the  king- 
dom, Cziraki,  declared  with  tears  that  nothing  should  ever 
induce  him  to  cross  a  bridge  which  was  to  him  the  symbol  of 
the  ruin  of  the  old  national  constitution. 

The  Magyar  language  first  entered  into  parliamentary  life 
in  the  diet  of  1833,  the  lower  chamber  obliging  the  upper  to 
carry  on  all  its  correspondence  with  them  in  it.  Louis  Kossuth, 
a  young  advocate,  edited  a  Gazette  of  the  diet  in  Magyar,  and 
published  it  secretly,  in  order  to  avoid  the  official  censorship 
of  the  press,  getting  it  distributed  by  the  officials  in  the  various 
'  See  Carlyle's  French  Revolution,  bk.  vi.  chap.  ii. 


REVIVAL   OF   THE  SLAVS.  495 

comifats,  in  spite  of  every  hindrance.  This  paper  interested  the 
whole  land  in  the  parliamentary  debates,  so  that  the  most  dis- 
tant frontiers  shared  in  the  political  discussions  which  took  place 
in  Pressburg.  The  affairs  of  Poland  were  the  subject  of  debate 
in  some  of  the  meetings  of  the  assembly.  The  revolution  of 
Warsaw  had  been  unsuccessful,  but  it  had  roused  much 
sympathy  in  Hungary,  and  some  of  the  Polish  refugees  who 
had  taken  shelter  in  France  did  their  best  to  persuade  the 
Hungarians  to  interfere  on  their  behalf.  Violent  speeches 
were  made  in  the  diet,  and  one  orator  went  so  far  as  to 
reproach  the  government  for  having  employed  Hungarian 
subjects  in  the  oppression  of  Italian  patriots.  All  the  tact 
and  all  the  popularity  of  the  palatine  Joseph  were  needed  to 
prevent  an  open  rupture.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  revolu- 
tion of  Warsaw,  in  1S30,  to  some  extent  prepared  the  way  for 
that  of  Pesth  in  1848. 

Revival  of  the  Slavs — Bohemia — Kollar, 

Certainly  from  the  year  1825  to  that  of  1835  no  other 
portion  of  the  empire  presents  so  interesting  a  study  for  the 
historian  as  Hungary,  with  its  parliamentary  and  provincial 
institutions,  its  eloquent  debaters,  and  its  endless  struggles 
between  retrograde  and  liberal  ideas.  But  the  life  of  a  people 
is  not  to  be  found  only  in  their  official  manifestations ;  some- 
times it  spends  itself  in  the  development  of  private  opinions 
which  lead  in  the  end  to  sudden  explosions.  The  first  thirty 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  not  less  fruitful  for  the 
Slavs  of  Austria  than  for  the  Magyars,  and  the  changes  which 
occurred  among  them,  though  they  involved  moral  develop- 
ment only,  deserve  our  serious  attention. 

In  Bohemia  the  diet  had  been  convoked  by  Leopold  II. 
immediately  after  his  accession,  and  its  members  had 
presented  a  long  memorandum  to  him  in  which,  their 
grievances  were  enumerated,  and  he  was  asked  to  recall  all 
measures  passed  in  the  two  preceding  reigns  which  infringed 
either  the    rights  of  the  kingdom  or  the  institutions  of  the 


496  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Church.  Among  others,  they  demanded  the  restoration  of 
their  right  to  take  part  in  legislation,  of  which  they  had  been 
deprived  in  1627  by  the  new  constitution  of  Ferdinand  II. 
Leopold  yielded  on  some  points  of  detail,  but  on  none  which 
really  affected  the  authority  of  the  central  power,  and  he 
refused  to  modify  in  the  smallest  particular  the  state  of  things 
previous  to  1765,  when  Joseph  II.  had  been  first  associated 
in  the  government.  The  diet  only  recovered  the  right  of 
levying  the  taxes,  of  arranging  the  mode  in  which  they  should 
be  collected,  and  of  discussing  laws  proposed  to  them  by  the 
king.  The  permanent  committee  was  also  restored,  but  with 
much  enfeebled  powers.  The  crown  of  St.  Vacslav  was  sent 
back  to  Prague,  and  the  emperor  paid  homage  to  the  historical 
traditions  of  the  country  by  having  himself  crowned  with  it. 
His  successors  Francis  I.  and  Ferdinand  IV.  followed  his  ex- 
ample. The  present  emperor  and  Joseph  II.  are  the  only  two 
kings  who  have  broken  through  this  ancient  custom. 

But  the  efforts  of  the  diet  to  recover  their  old  privileges 
were  only  feeble  signs  of  that  intellectual  movement  which  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  prepared  the  way  for  the 
revival  of  national  life  in  Bohemia. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  a  voice  here  and  there  had 
been  raised,  even  among  the  Jesuits,  to  protest  against  the 
persecution  of  the  Chekh  nation  and  language.  One  of  the 
Jesuits  named  Balbin  was  the  author  of  a  curious  work  called 
'■'■  Dissertatio  Apologetica  Linguce  Sloveniccz.^''  He  pointed  out  the 
danger  lest  his  nation  should  disappear,  as  formerly  the 
Slavs  of  the  Elbe  had  disappeared,  swallowed  up  by  the  ocean 
of  Germans.  "  St.  Vacslav,  patron  of  Bohemia,"  he  cries, 
"  leave  us  not  to  perish,  us  and  our  descendants  !  Restore 
their  ancient  glory  to  the  Chekhs.  Should  we  perish,  thou 
wilt  look  in  vain  from  the  hands  of  strangers  for  the  honours 
which  thy  Bohemian  land  has  paid  to  thee  during  so  many 
centuries."  The  ^^Dissertatio  Apologetica "  remained  unpublished 
down  to  the  year  1775,  when  it  was  brought  out  by  the  learned 
Pelcel   on    the   eve  of  the   accession  of  Joseph  II.     A  year 


LITERARY  REVIVAL   IN  BOHEMIA.  497 

before  Count  Kinsley,  one  of  the  few  remaining  representatives 
of  the  old  native  aristocracy,  had  demanded  the  maintenance 
and  development  of  the  national  language  in  a  pamphlet 
written  in  German.  In  1784,  the  Royal  Society  of  Prague  was 
founded.  Painstaking  historians  such  as  Pelcel,  Dobner,  and 
Prochazka,  set  themselves  to  work  to  study  the  early  history 
of  Bohemia,  and  this  study  could  not  fail  to  bring  Slav 
questions  prominently  forward  among  the  learned  ;  archaeology 
led  to  studies  in  philology,  and  it  became  no  longer  possible 
to  treat  with  contempt  a  language  which  was  found  to  possess 
a  curious  interest  of  its  own,  a  rich  literature,  and  a  close 
connection  with  that  wide  family  of  Slav  tongues  which  spread 
from  the  Adriatic  to  the  Arctic  Ocean.  In  1793,  a  Chair  of 
the  Chekh  Language  was  founded  in  the  university  of  Prague, 
where  so  shortly  before  Joseph  II.  had  ordered  all  teaching 
should  be  carried  on  in  German.  The  great  linguist  Do- 
brovsky  (1753-1829)  by  his  travels  and  his  writings  laid  the 
foundation  of  Slav  comparative  philology.  Hitherto  Chekh 
had  been  treated  as  a  dead  language ;  now  young  poets  re- 
stored it  once  more  to  life,  and  made  it  the  organ  of  their 
patriotic  aspirations.  In  181 8,  thanks  to  the  generosity  of  the 
counts  of  Sternberg,  the  Chekh  Museum  was  founded  at  Prague, 
and  excited  much  sympahetic  interest  by  its  curious  collections. 
Archives  and  libraries  were  eagerly  examined,  and  the 
discovery  of  such  poems  of  the  Middle  Ages  as  "  The 
Judgment  of  Libusa  "  and  "  The  Manuscript  of  Kralove-Dvor  " 
was  received  with  enthusiasm.  The  authenticity  of  these  poems 
has  been  doubted.  This  is  not  the  right  place  in  which  to 
discuss  such  a  question ;  but  one  thing  at  least  is  certain — 
whether  true  or  false,  they  are  a  complete  expression  of  the 
popular  opinions  of  the  time,  and  have  exercised  considerable 
influence  on  the  Bohemians.^  "  It  would  be  disgraceful  in  us 
to  go  for  justice  to  the  Germans,"  said  the  "Judgment  of  Libusa ;" 
"among  us  justice  is  determined  by  the  laws  which  our  fathers 

'  See  M.  Leger's  Chants  Ileroiques  el   Chansones  Populaires  des  Slaves 
de  Boheme. 

2    K 


498  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  old  brought  into  these  lands."  "  The  foreigner  has  entered  into 
our  heritage  by  force,  and  orders  us  about  in  a  foreign  tongue, 
and  the  things  that  he  does  in  his  foreign  land  fronm  morning 
till  night,  those  things  he  forces  our  wives  and  our  children  to 
do,"  says  "  The  Manuscript  of  Kralove-Dvor."  Most  assuredly 
if  these  poems  are  either  forged  or  falsified,  the  forger  was  a 
man  of  genius,  and  even  if  they  are  condemned  by  impartial 
science  they  still  deserve  the  gratitude  of  Chekh  patriots. 
From  this  time  forward  some  new  publication  appeared  every 
year,  and  the  progress  made  by  the  nation  surpassed  even  the 
hopes  of  those  by  whom  it  had  most  been  furthered. 

Bohemia  was  well  aware  that,  alone,  she  was  too  feeble  to 
hold  her  own  at  the  same  time  against  both  Austria  and 
Germany  ;  but  she  could  help  to  form  a  union  of  the  Slav 
peoples  which  might  hope  to  do  so.  It  was  true  that  the  Slav 
language  was  only  spoken  by  some  five  or  six  millions  of  men, 
but  these  men  could  claim  relationship  with  Russians,  Poles,  and 
Croatian-Servians,  who  all  spoke  languages  akin  to  theirs.  The 
union  of  the  Slavs  {Slovanska  Vzajemnost)  became  the  motto  of 
the  thoughtful  patriots,  and  added  greatly  to  their  power.  It 
was  celebrated  by  the  poet  KoUar  in  a  well-known  pamphlet, 
and  in  the  fine  poem  which  he  dedicated  to  his  race  under  the 
name  of  "  Slavy  Dcera,  the  Daughter  of  Slava,"  or  the  Daughter 
of  Glory  (1824).  "We  have  been  born  to  a  new  life,"  sings 
[•Collar,  '.'  we  have  entered  on  a  wide  desert  which  Heaven  has 
not  yet  made  fertile.  The  Romance  and  the  Teutonic  nations 
walk  along  a  beaten  path,  while  we  follow  with  slow  and 
lingering  steps.  But  we  are  a  young  race,  we  know  what  has 
been  done  by  others,  while  they  are  ignorant  of  what  we  are 
to  be  in  the  annals  of  humanity.  We  do  not  desire  a  victory 
which  shall  fall  from  the  skies  without  the  work  of  our  hands 
or  the  sweat  of  our  brows."  Elsewhere  he  recalls  the  memory 
of  the  fate  of  the  Slavs  of  the  Elbe.  "  It  lies  yonder ;  I  see 
it  through  my  tears,  that  wide  land  which  was  once  the  cradle 
and  is  now  the  tomb  of  a  great  nation.  ,  .  .  From  the  sources 
of  the  Elbe  to  the  Baltic  sounded  a  fine  and  noble  language. 


/COLLAR.  499 

Why  is  it  not  to  be  heard  any  longer  there  ?     Shame  on  thee, 
Germany  !     Thou  who  art  envious  and  grasping  !     Thou  hast 
caused  torrents  of  our  blood  to  be  shed,  and  now  thou  con- 
tinuest  to  pour  forth  floods  of  calumny,  hoping  to  drown  in 
them  our  memories  of  the  days  of  old.     Only  he  who  knows 
how   to   respect   the   liberty   of  other   men    deserves    liberty 
himself.     He  who  can  keep  slaves  in  irons  is  himself  a  slave." 
Again,  he  takes  shame  to  Bohemia  that  she  should  have 
allowed  herself  to  be  invaded  and  colonised  by  the  Germans. 
"  Who  is  this  young  and    beautiful   girl  who  runs  along  the 
fields  ?     Very  poor  must  she  be  to  wear  a  dress  patched  about 
with  divers  colours.     It  is  our  own  Bohemia,  dotted  over  with 
foreign  colonies."     Then  he  summons  the  Slavs  to  enter  into 
a  definite  alliance.     "  Let  there  be  no  more  discord  !  Russians, 
Servians,   Chekhs,  and  Poles,  unite  !     Let  other  nations  raise 
their  thrones  on    crumbling   or   on    solid   ground ;    you,   my 
brothers,  you  shall  raise  your  arch  on  the  ancient  ruins  of  a 
melancholy  past.     From  Athos  to  Pomerania,  from  the  fields 
of  Silesia  to  the  plain  of  Kosovo,  from  Constantinople  to  the 
Volga,  everywhere  where  the  Slav  tongue  may  be  heard,  rejoice 
and  embrace,  happy  in  your  immense  Fatherland,  the  home  of 
the  Slavs.     Believe  me,  my  brothers,  we  have  all  which  goes  to 
make  the  durability  of  a  great  nation.     Continents  and  oceans 
lie  at   our  feet,  gold    and  silver,  strong  and  vigorous  hands, 
and  a  rich  and  powerful  language — we  possess  all  but  concord 
and  liberty."     And  then,  still  pursuing  his  dream  of  unity,  he 
sketches  a  fine  image  of  the  land  of  the  Slavs  :  "  I  have  said  to 
you  a  hundred  times,  and  I  say  to  you  again  to-day,  O  scattered 
Slavs,  be  a  whole,  and  no  longer  scattered  groups  !    Be  a  whole 
or  nothing  !    Ah  !  how  have  I  thought  at  times,  when  my  mind 
was  sore  perplexed,  if  our  Slav  nations  were  but  gold  and  silver 
and  copper  I  would  mould  them  into  one  statue.     Of  Russia  I 
would  make  the  hands,  of  Poland  the  body,  of  the  Chekhs  the 
arms  and   the  head,  and  of  the   Servians    the  feet,  and   the 
smaller  nations,  the  Wends,  the  Lusatians,  Silesians,  Croats,  and 
the  Slovaks  should  be  the  vestments  and  the  weapons.     And 


500  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Europe  should  bow  down  before  this  image,  whose  head  should 
touch  the  clouds,  and  whose  steps  should  reach  across  the 
world." 

A  whole  school  of  patriot  poets  grew  up  round  Kollar ; 
Celakovsky,  author  of  "Russian  Echoes  "and  "The  Rose  with 
a  Hundred  Leaves;"  Hanka,  and  Vocel.  In  1837,  Safarik,  a 
Slovak,  wrote  a  great  work  on  Slav  antiquities,  and  Palacky, 
a  Moravian,  who  was  appointed  historiographer  of  the  kingdom 
of  Bohemia,  began  a  history  of  his  adopted  country,  which  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  of  our  time,  and  has  taken 
more  than  half  a  century  to  complete.  Thanks  to  the  talents 
and  patriotism  of  this  chosen  body  of  her  sons,  Bohemia  has 
not  only  recovered  her  old  feeling  of  nationality,  but  has  also 
been  able  to  place  herself  at  the  head  of  all  the  Slav  peoples 
in  the  empire,  while  the  southern  Slavs  have  not  been  slow  in 
following  her  example. 

The  Southern  Slavs — Ljiidevit  Gaj — Panslavism. 

AVe  have  already  seen  with  what  enthusiasm  the  Slovene 
Vodnik  greeted  the  awakening  of  Illyria  at  the  time  of  the 
French  occupation,  but  the  revival  of  the  sense  of  nationality 
among  the  southern  Slavs  was  destined  to  come,  not  from  the 
action  of  the  French,  but  from  that  of  the  Croats.  The 
impulse  was  given  by  the  revolution  in  Servia ;  Croatia  was 
deeply  moved  by  it,  and  the  writings  of  the  first  literary  men  of 
the  new  principality,  the  Karadj itches  and  the  Obradovitches, 
met  with  a  sympathetic  echo  among  the  Croatians.  In  1826, 
a  Servian  Literary  Society  {Matilsa)  had  been  founded  by  the 
Servians  of  Hungary,  and  soon  after  Zagreb  (Agram),  the 
capital  of  Croatia,  made  an  effort  in  the  same  direction.  Up  • 
to  this  time  the  diversity  of  dialect  in  the  various  provinces 
had  proved  an  obstacle  to  the  union  of  their  literature,  but 
now  an  eminent  publicist,  Louis  Gaj,  undertook  to  form  an 
harmonious  whole  out  of  the  scattered  literary  forces  of  Illyria. 
He  began  by  publishing  two  newspapers,  the  one  called  The 
Croat   Gazette,   and   the    other    The    Croat,    Dalmatian,  and 


LOUIS  GAJ.  501 

Slavonian  Dawn  (1835).  His  motto  was,  "A  people  without 
nationality  is  a  body  without  bones."  He  proposed  that 
instead  of  the  local  names  of  Servians,  Croats,  Slovenes, 
and  Dalmatians,  should  be  substituted  the  common  denomi- 
nation of  Illyrians,  a  name  which  had  been  brought  back 
into  use  by  Napoleon.  In  the  following  year,  he  called 
his  two  papers  The  lUyrian  Gazette  and  The  Illyrian  Dawn. 
"  Europe,"  he  said  in  poetical  language,  "  leans  upon  a  triangular 
lyre.  This  lyre  is  Illyria.  It  stretches  from  Villach  to  Varna 
and  Scutari,  and  the  cords  of  this  lyre  are  Carinthia,  Gorica, 
and  Istria,  Carniola,  Styria,  Croatia,  Slavonia,  Dalmatia,  Ragusa, 
Bosnia,  Montenegro,  Herzegovina,  Servia,  Bulgaria,  and 
Southern  Hungary.  These  cords  are  not  in  tune  together. 
What  we  desire  is  to  make  them  sound  in  harmony."  lUyrism, 
which  was  at  first  received  with  enthusiasm,  soon  met  with 
violent  opposition,  first  from  the  Hungarians,  who  did  not 
wish  to  see  the  Slavs  escape  from  Magyar  tutelage,  and  next 
from  the  Servians,  who  feared  lest  their  tisaditions  and  their 
hopes  should  be  absorbed  in  those  of  the  Croats.  The 
movement  gradually  changed  its  character,  and  the  very 
name  has  now  disappeared  ;  but  it  has  left  among  the  southern 
Slavs  a  strong  feeling  of  their  literary  solidarity.  It  had  also 
given  a  fruitful  impulse  to  intellectual  effort ;  the  ancient 
monuments  of  Ragusa  and  the  early  efforts  of  the  Servian 
muse  became  the  objects  of  study,  and  a  school  of  poetry 
arose,  less  brilliant  perhaps  than  that  of  Prague,  but  not  less 
patriotic.  Stanko  Vraz  and  Preradovic  are  the  best  represen- 
tatives of  this  school.  The  literary  movement  spread  from  the 
Croats  to  their  neighbours  the  Slovenes,  and  Vodnik  found 
worthy  successors  in  Presern  and  Koseski.  About  the  same 
time  Bleiweis  founded  political  journalism  in  Ljublanja. 

Thus  at  the  two  extremities  of  the  empire  the  Slavs  awoke 
and  claimed  their  share  of  the  sunshine,  ready  to  fight  for  it 
here  against  the  Magyars  and  there  against  the  Germans. 
Though  they  were  separated  both  by  their  history  and  their 
geographical   position,  they  had   learned    to   recognize    their 


502  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGAKY. 

solidarity,  and  from  the  thought  of  it  gathered  strength  for  the 
struggle  which  they  had  to  face. 

In  western  Europe  we  often  talk  of  Panslavism,  and  we 
picture  to  ourselves  the  Russians  as  constantly  occupied  in 
endeavouring  to  obtain  influence  over  the  Slavs  by  means  of 
political  or  literary  emissaries.  This  idea  is  absolutely  false. 
The  Slavs  have  watched  the  growth  and  progress  of  Russia 
with  natural  interest.  Reduced  themselves  to  a  most  pre- 
carious existence,  they  have  sometimes  hoped  that  the  great 
Northern  nation  would  not  remain  indifferent  to  their  fate ; 
they  have  rejoiced  in  its  progress  and  have  found  in  it  some 
consolation  for  their  own  misfortunes.  Isolated  and  feeble, 
they  have  founded  their  hopes  on  memories  of  the  ancient 
union  of  their  race  or  on  dreams  of  its  future.  But  these 
hopes  do  not  date  from  our  century ;  they  were  uttered  long 
ago  by  Slavs  of  all  the  various  nations.  As  early  as  the 
seventeenth  century  Krizanic,  a  Croat  priest,  went  to  beg  for 
the  protection  of  the  czar  iVlexis  Mikhailovitch  for  his  people, 
and  made  himself  the  interpreter  of  their  needs.  "The  Slavs 
of  the  Baltic,  of  Poland,  Silesia,  Bohemia,  and  Moravia,"  he 
says  in  a  curious  work,  "have  fallen  into  a  miserable  state  of 
serfdom.  They  have  Germanized  themselves  until  they  are 
neither  Slavs  nor  Germans.  The  peoples  of  the  Danube  have 
lost  their  national  language,  and  there  is  no  Slav  sovereign 
except  in  Russia.  It ,  is  thou,  therefore,  O  great  czar,  who 
oughtest  to  watch  over  the  Slavs,  and,  like  a  good  father,  take 
care  of  thy  scattered  children.  .  .  .  God  has  given  us  thee,  O 
czar,  that  thou  mayest  come  to  the  help  of  the  Slavs  of  the 
Danube,  the  Poles,  and  the  Chekhs,  to  make  them  see  the 
oppression  and  humiliation  which  weigh  them  down.  Thou 
alone  canst  teach  them  how  to  avenge  their  nation  and  shake 
off  the  German  yoke  which  crushes  them.  The  Slavs  of  the 
Danube  can  do  nothing  of  themselves ;  a  force  outside  them- 
selves is  needed  to  raise  them  once  more  on  their  feet,  and 
to  make  them  to  be  counted  once  more  among  the  nations." 

Many  other  Slavs  besides  Krizanic,  both  before  and  after  his 


i 


PANSLAVISM.  503 

time,  have  praised  the  greatness  and  the  unity  of  their  race, 
and  in  their  dreams  of  a  united  kingdom  of  the  Slavs,  the 
Illyrians  of  Zagreb  and  the  Chekhs  of  Prague  only  returned 
once  more  to  their  old  traditions.  Their  German  and  Magyar 
enemies  pretend  that  these  dreams  were  not  spontaneous,  but 
prompted  from  outside.  This  is  a  pure  calumny.  The  Slav 
movement  of  which  we  have  traced  the  principal  phases  was 
absolutely  original,  and  the  Russians,  far  from  having  helped 
it,  remained  for  a  long  time  quite  unaffected  by  it.  What  the 
Slavs  want  above  all  things,  and  what  they  dream  of  to-day,  is 
to  reach  the  full  development  of  their  national  life  and  to 
obtain  complete  recognition  of  all  their  ancient  rights.  If  they 
appeal  to  the  greatness  of  their  race,  it  i§  only  by  so  doing 
to  oppose  moral  force  to  the  greed  of  their  neighbours.  They 
have  no  idea  of  throwing  themselves  into  the  arms  of  Russia. 
Despair  alone  could  lead  them  to  such  an  extremity. 


CHAPTER   XXIX. 

FERDINAND    IV. — AUSTRIA    ON    THE    EVE   OF   THE    REVOLUTION 
(1835-1848). 

The  Staats-conferenz. 

Francis  died  on  the  2nd  of  March,  1835.  He  was  regretted 
by  the  people  of  Vienna.  The  memory  of  the  many  trials 
they  had  passed  through  together  and  the  genial  manner  of 
the  sovereign  had  attached  them  to  his  person.  In  the 
provinces  a  report  was  spread  that  he  had  acquired  a  gigantic 
fortune,  and  that  he  had  left  the  whole  of  it  to  his  subjects. 
The  opening  of  his  will  was,  consequently,  awaited  with  the 
greatest  impatience.  The  following  lines,  which  deserve 
quotation,  were  found  in  it :  "  To  my  subjects  I  bequeath  my 
love.  I  hope  to  be  able  to  pray  for  them.  I  beg  them  to 
show  to  my  lawful  successor  all  that  fidelity  and  devotion 
which  they  have  shown  to  me.  I  thank  all  those  public 
officials  who  have  served  me  well."  Louis  XIV.  might  have 
spoken  these  words.  Ferdinand  IV.,  the  successor  of  Francis, 
was  but  ill  fitted  to  bear  the  heavy  burden  of  the  monarchy. 
He  was  very  delicate  and  subject  to  attacks  of  epilepsy,  and 
was  hardly  capable  of  ruling  himself  When  he  was  well  he 
possessed  neither  a  clear  mind  nor  a  firm  will,  and  he  found 
even  the  royal  signature  a  piece  of  hard  work.  Metternich 
retained  all  his  influence.  According  to  his  partisans,  Francis  II. 
had  recommended  him  to  his  son  as  the  best  of  his  ministers. 
"  Do  not  meddle  with  the  foundations  of  the  political  edifice, 


FEED IX AND  IV.  505 

alter  nothing  ;  have  full  confidence  in  prince  Metternich,  my 
best  friend  and  most  faithful  adviser.  Undertake  nothing 
without  him."  But  Metternich  could  not  take  upon  himself 
to  govern  instead  of  the  real  sovereign,  and  it  was  soon  needful 
to  organize  a  kind  of  regency.  The  czar  Nicholas  urgently 
advised  this  measure  during  a  visit  which  he  paid  to  Teplitz, 
in  September,  1835.  A  council  of  regency  was  consequently 
formed  of  Clam  Martinitz,  who  was  the  emperor's  aide-de-camp 
and  head  of  the  military  department  of  the  council  of  state, 
Metternich,  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  Kolovrat,  and  the  arch- 
dukes Louis  and  Francis-Charles;  these  formed  the  Staats- 
conferenz  and  were  the  real  organs  of  executive  power.  Their 
exact  position  was  never  determined  ;  chosen  to  govern  until 
the  monarch  should  be  restored  to  health,  the  regency  was 
always  looked  upon  as  a  temporary  arrangement ;  but,  in  fact, 
they  exercised  full  power  up  to  the  time  of  Ferdinand's  abdi- 
cation. Their  government  has  been  accused  of  great  want 
of  unity  and  a  curious  insensibility  to  the  real  wishes  of  the 
nationalities,  and  there  is  no  doubt  most  of  the  mistakes  of 
this  period  were  due  to  them. 

There  were,  however,  a  few  liberal  measures  passed  at  the 
beginning  of  this  reign.  On  the  accession  of  Ferdinand  an 
amnesty  was  granted  to  all  political  prisoners.  A  consul  was 
established  in  Servia,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  young  prin- 
cipality owed  its  existence  to  an  insurrection  against  legal 
authority,  and  a  treaty  of  navigation  was  entered  into  with 
Greece,  which  was  in  the  same  position.  Diplomatic  relations 
with  Portugal  were  also  resumed.  At  the  same  time  the 
cabinet  of  Vienna  supported  the  Carlists  in  Spain  against  the 
Christinos,  and  even  sent  them  some  small  help  in  money. 
The  alliance  between  the  three  Northern  powers  still  con- 
tinued, the  conduct  of  Austria  towards  Poland  sufficiently 
proving  its  existence. 


506  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY.       ' 

Polish  Affairs — Occupation  of  Cracow — The  Galician  Massacres 

(1846). 

By  the  treaties  of  181 5  the  town  of  Cracow  had  been  con- 
stituted an  independent  repubhc ;  it  had  since  become  the 
centre  of  conspiracy  to  the  PoHsh  patriots,  and  was  looked 
upon  with  suspicion  by  all  the  three  Northern  powers.  In 
183 1,  the  Russians  had  taken  possession  of  it  in  order  to 
deprive  the  insurgents  of  one  of  their  chief  bases  of  operations, 
but  they  had  been  obhged  to  evacuate  it  on  the  representations 
of  Austria,  and  the  town  remained  the  centre  of  disturbance 
and  the  refuge  of  all  the  revolutionary  Poles.  At  last  the 
three  powers  determined  to  interfere ;  in  the  first  instance 
they  contented  themselves  with  demanding  the  expulsion  of 
all  who  had  taken  any  part  in  the  revolution  of  1830,  but  in 
1836  they  resolved  to  occupy  the  town.  This  time  it  was 
Austria  who  undertook  to  reduce  the  republic  to  order,  and  she 
did  so  in  spite  of  the  repeated  protests  of  both  England  and 
France.     This  was  the  first  step  towards  the  final  occupation. 

Meantime  the  Poles  of  Galicia  had  begun  to  feel  the 
influence  of  those  ideas  of  nationality  and  of  revenge  which 
had  been  spread  by  refugees  from  the  other  districts  of  Poland. 
The  sympathies  of  the  whole  of  liberal  Europe  had  been 
enlisted  on  the  side  of  this  oppressed  race,  and  it  would  have 
been  difficult  for  Austria  openly  to  have  opposed  these  efforts 
towards  liberty  on  the  part  of  Galicia.  It  was,  however,  found 
possible  to  paralyse  them  by  tactics  similar  to  those  which 
had  so  often  been  successfully  applied  to  Hungary — by  making 
use  of  the  conflicting  elements  of  society  in  the  distnrbed  dis- 
tricts. The  Polish  szlachta,  harsher  towards  the  peasants  than 
even  the  Magyar  nobility,  had  excited  the  intense  hatred  of 
the  people  by  the  mode  in  which  it  had  treated  them  and  the 
ignorance  in  which  it  had  kept  them.  The  government  had 
also  largely  contributed  to  the  increase  of  ill-feeling  between  the 
classes  by  its  opposition  to  all  agrarian  reform,  and  its  practice 
of  making  the  nobles  its  recruiting  officers  and  its  collectors  of 


INSURRECTION  IN  POLAND.  507 

taxes,  while  it  left  the  task  of  redressing  what  abuses  were  re- 
dressed to  its  own  officials.  It  must  also  not  be  forgotten  that 
in  the  greater  part  of  Galicia  the  peasants  were  not  Poles,  In 
the  whole  of  the  eastern  portion  of  the  province  most  of  them 
are  Ruthenians,  and  these  men  had  far  more  to  suffer  from 
the  Galician  magnates  than  the  Polish  peasants.  They  were 
members  of  the  Uniate  Greek  Church,  and  often  had  to 
suffer  from  the  fanaticism  of  their  masters,  who  made  them 
pay  a  tax  for  permission  to  worship  in  their  churches,  or 
farmed  these  buildings  to  Jews.  Stadion,  who  was  governor 
of  Galicia,  knew  of  these  grievances,  and  had  taken  careful  note 
of  them. 

The  Galician  nobles  could  not  remain  ignorant  of  the 
claims  which  were  to  be  raised  against  them,  and  in  the  diet 
which  met  in  1843  at  Lwow  (Lemberg),  though  it  was  very 
far  from  being  a  liberal  diet,  they  had  asked  to  be  allowed  to 
consider  the  condition  of  the  peasants.  But  the  Austrian 
government  refused ;  it  was  by  no  means  anxious  to  put  an 
end  to  a  state  of  things  which  allowed  it  to  apply  the  old 
maxim,  Divide  ut  impe7-es. 

Soon  everything  was  prepared  for  a  Polish  rising  in  Galicia 
and  the  duchy  of  Poznan,  and  on  February  28,  1846,  the 
Austrian  government  announced  that  a  plot  had  been  dis- 
covered, of  which  Cracow  was  the  centre.  Upon  this  the 
Austrian  general  Collin  proceeded  to  occupy  the  town  with 
about  one  thousand  men  and  three  cannons.  For  two  days 
the  town  seemed  quiet,  but  on  the  31st  the  people  rose,  the 
senate  and  other  officials  of  the  republic  resigned  their 
authority,  and  the  Austrian  troops  were  attacked  by  the  Poles 
and  forced  to  retreat.  On  the  2nd  of  March,  however,  colonel 
Benedek  hastened  from  Lwow,  and,  with  the  help  of  the 
peasants,  beat  the  revolutionary  committee  and  recovered  the 
town.  Thus  did  Benedek,  "  the  Falcon  of  the  Vistula," 
begin  a  career  which  was  to  end  at  Sadowa.  The  brief  success 
of  the  people  of  Cracow  caused  great  terror  at  Vienna ;  arrests 
took  place  all  over  the  empire,  and  especially  in  Galicia,  and 


508  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

these  prompt  measures  put  a  stop  to  the  insurrection,  which 
otherwise  would  soon,  no  doubt,  have  reached  Russian  Poland. 
The  peasants  were  not  inclined  to  take  the  side  of  their  lords, 
and  either  denounced  them  to  government  or  themselves  cap- 
tured them  and  delivered  them  up  to  the  authorities.  A 
regular  peasant  war  broke  out,  and  the  circle  of  Tarnow  was 
wasted  by  murder,  pillage,  and  conflagration.  It  has  been 
asserted  that  the  Austrian  government  encouraged  the  mur- 
derers by  rewards,  and  that  men  employed  in  the  custom- 
houses and  in  the  offices  of  the  tax-collectors  joined  the  peasants, 
who  declared  that  they  pillaged  and  killed  by  order  of  the 
emperor.  Ferdinand  of  Este,  a  man  of  high  position,  told 
the  wife  of  a  Pole  who  had  been  assassinated  "  that  the  death 
of  her  husband  had  been  a  mistake ;  it  had  been  intended  that 
his  brother  should  be  killed."  It  was  at  this  time  that  the 
poet  Ujejski  wrote  the  hymn  which  is  still  popular  in  Poland, 
^' Z Dymem  Pozarow'''' :  "This  song  rises  to  Thee,  O  Lord,  with 
the  smoke  of  our  burning  homes,  with  the  blood  of  our 
brothers  ;  it  is  a  bitter  cry,  a  groan  from  out  of  the  depths. 
Such  prayers  make  the  hair  grow  white ;  the  crown  of  thorns 
has  pierced  our  heads.  O  Lord  !  Lord  !  what  is  this  that 
time  has  brought  us  ?  The  mother  is  killed  by  her  son,  the 
brother  by  the  brother.  Amongst  us  there  are  many  Cains. 
But,  nevertheless,  O  Lord,  these  men  are  innocent ;  they  have 
been  led  on  by  demons.  Oh,  punish  the  hand,  and  not  the 
sword  that  is  blind  !" 

The  peasants  believed  that  the  emperor  would  relieve 
them  henceforth  from  all  their  obligations  to  their  lords,  as  the 
reward  of  their  devotion  to  him.  Their  hopes  were  but  par- 
tially fulfilled  by  the  patent  of  April  13th,  which  abolished  com- 
pulsory cartage  and  forced  labour  during  harvest,  and  decreed 
that  the  peasants  were  in  future  to  bring  their  grievances  before 
the  captains  of  circles.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  nobles  pro- 
tested against  these  changes,  which  had  been  made  without 
consulting  them. 

The  town  of  Cracow  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Aus- 


OCCUPATION  OF  CRACOW.  509 

trians.  The  foreign  powers  were  told  that  its  occupation  was 
a  temporary  measure  for  miUtary  purposes ;  that  the  Austrian 
troops  only  remained  there  to  enable  the  little  republic  to 
establish  a  regular  government.  But  before  long  Austria  took 
permanent  possession  of  it,  with  the  consent  of  Russia  and 
Prussia,  and  the  government  officials  in  those  districts  where 
the  peasant  war  had  been  carried  on  with  most  energy  were 
promoted.  The  Polish  gentry  were  filled  with  despair,  and  some 
of  them,  as  is  proved  by  a  curious  pamphlet,  "The  Letter 
of  a  Polish  Gentleman  to  Count  Metternich,"  even  thought  of 
throwing  themselves  into  the  arms  of  Panslavism.  France 
and  England  protested  in  vain.  Austria  was  thus  the  first  to 
violate  the  treaties  of  1815,  of  which  for  the  last  thirty  years 
she  had  been  the  self-constituted  and  intolerant  guardian. 
This  territory  is  the  only  land  acquired  by  Austria  between 
the  Congress  of  Vienna  and  the  Congress  of  Berlin ;  it  com- 
prises about  tw'enty-two  square  miles  and  160,000  inhabitants. 
The  annexation  of  Cracow  served  to  render  closer  than  ever 
the  union  of  the  three  powers  who  were  parties  to  it,  and 
other  events  soon  helped  to  prove  how  close  this  union  was. 
For  example,  in  1832,  when  the  king  of  the  Belgians  offered 
the  command  of  his  army  to  the  Polish  general  Skrzyniecki, 
the  courts  of  Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia,  together  recalled 
their  ambassadors  from  Brussels. 

Yet  in  the  time  of  Ferdinand,  as  in  the  time  of  Francis,  it  was 
hard  for  Austria  and  Russia  to  agree  about  the  Eastern  question. 
The  Porte,  enfeebled  as  it  was  at  this  time  by  the  success  of 
its  rebellious  vassal,  Mehemet  Ali,  seemed  as  if  it  might  more 
easily  become  the  prey  of  Russia  than  of  Austria,  whose  Eastern 
policy  had  always  been  so  blundering.  Metternich  determined, 
unhappily,  to  assist  the  sultan  against  Mehemet  Ali,  and, 
as  a  result  of  a  conference  held  at  Vienna,  persuaded  the 
representative  of  the  czar,  Buteniev,  to  sign  a  collective  note 
of  the  European  powers  undertaking  to  support  Turkey. 
Buteniev  believed  himself  secure  of  the  czar's  approval,  but 
instead    Nicholas   was    much    irritated,    disavowed    his    am- 


5  I O  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGA R  Y. 

bassador,  and  proceeded  to  treat  directly  with  England  (July 
15,  1840),  without  consulting  Austria,  who  was  obliged  to 
follow  the  lead  of  the  two  powers.  They  were  soon  joined 
by  Prussia.  The  peaceful  France  of  the  days  of  Louis 
Philippe  was  excluded  from  the  European  concert.  Mehemet 
Ali  was  forced  to  restore  the  greater  part  of  his  conquests, 
and  Syria  was  taken  from  him  by  the  help  of  the  Austrian 
squadron,  Austria  now  for  the  first  time  taking  rank  among 
the  maritime  powers  of  Europe.  In  the  month  of  July  follow- 
ing, the  treaty  was  signed  which  forebade  entrance  into  the 
Straits  of  Dardanelles  to  all  ships  of  war  unauthorized  by  the 
sultan. 

Progress  of  Public  Opinion — The  Bohemian  Diet — Havlicek. 

Poland  and  the  East  provided  the  only  two  questions  of 
importance  which  mark  the  foreign  policy  of  Ferdinand  IV. 
The  whole  interest  of  his  reign  lies  in  the  increasing  rapidity 
with  which  ideas  of  liberty  and  nationality  spread  among  the 
different  races  in  the  Austrian  empire,  and  in  the  more  or  less 
manifest  excitement  of  the  public  mind,  which  was  sure  to  land 
the  government  in  the  midst  of  a  revolution  directly  any  great 
event  should  suddenly  shake  Europe. 

The  various  diets  could  not  be  regarded  as  much  more 
than  mere  exponents  of  official  opinion.  In  Galicia  they 
were  cowed ;  in  some  of  the  provinces,  such  as  Upper  Austria, 
Moravia,  Silesia,  and  Carinthia,  they  were  silent ;  yet  in  Lower 
Austria,  Bohemia,  and,  above  all,  Hungary,  they  began  to 
manifest  liberal  tendencies  even  under  the  Gothic  and  feudal 
forms  which  they  still  preserved. 

In  the  diet  of  Lower  Austria  the  citizens  were  not  even 
represented ;  their  only  right  was  that  of  giving  their  assent, 
standing,  to  the  voting  of  the  taxes.  But,  nevertheless,  the 
new  ideas  which  had  invaded  the  capital  had  their  influence 
on  the  decisions  of  that  assembly.  It  showed  a  certain 
amount  of  independence  on  economic  questions  ;  vigorously 
demanded    that    the    diet   should    have    some    share   in   the 


STATE   OF  BOHEMIA.  51I 

government,  and  blamed  Francis  II.  for  having  reigned  with- 
out its  help.  Among  the  Tyrolese,  on  the  contrary,  clerical 
and  ultramontane  ideas  still  prevailed  ;  public  education  was 
almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  priests,  and  the  popular 
mind  was  occupied  by  missions  and  miracles.  In  1837,  the 
Jesuits  were  recalled  by  the  diet  to  this  province,  which  they 
had  never  dared  to  enter  since  the  preceding  century.  The 
Tyrolese  obstinately  refused  to  allow  railways  in  their  land. 

In  Bohemia  the  earlier  debates  in  the  diet  gave  evidence 
of  but  little  public  energy.  The  Estates  met  on  the  13th  of  April, 
1835,  and  their  first  act  was  to  vote  a  monument  to  Francis 
II.  They  gradually,  however,  set  to  work  to  restore  the  old 
parliamentary  forms,  which  had  strangely  fallen  into  disuse 
since  the  time  of  Joseph  II.,  and  the  assembly  busied  itself  with 
reducing  its  privileges  into  an  authoritative  form,  in  order  to 
find  out  what  belonged  to  them  as  a  whole,  and  what  belonged 
to  the  permanent  committee  {^Landesatischuss,  Zcmsky  Vybor), 
which  had  become  an  organ  of  mere  government.  These 
attempts  at  independence  were  reprimanded  by  the  emperor, 
who  expressed  his  displeasure  at  them  on  the  15th  of  October, 
1842.  New  taxes  were  levied  on  the  country  by  the  Landes- 
auschuss  and  the  government,  without  the  help  of  the  diet,  and 
a  serious  dispute  arose  between  Vienna  and  Prague.  The  high 
burgrave  of  the  kingdom,  count  Chotek,  was  dismissed,  and 
his  post  left  vacant.  In  the  hope  of  his  being  better  able  to 
restrain  the  turbulent  nobles,  the  archduke  Stephen,  son  of  the 
palatine  Joseph,  was  placed  at  the  head  of  Bohemia ;  but  the 
officials  who  were  sent  to  assist  him  were  foreigners,  and  they 
were  received  with  violent  protests.  The  Estates  demanded  the 
restoration  of  all  the  privileges  secured  to  the  diet  in  1627,  and 
thus  proclaimed  the  continuity  of  the  old  rights  which  had 
been  lost  sight  of  since  the  end  of  the  preceding  century. 
Unhappily,  the  claims  of  the  Chekh  nobles  were  limited  by  a 
narrow  spirit  of  caste ;  they  were  selfish  and  jealous,  defended 
their  feudal  privileges  to  the  uttermost,  and  showed  but  little 
desire  to  admit  the  townspeople  to  their  deliberations.     Only 


5  1 2  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  VSTRO-HUNGA R  V. 

four  royal  towns  were  represented  in  the  diet,  which  contained 
fourteen  bishops,  one  hundred  and  fifty-one  lords,  forty-three 
knights,  and  only  seven  citizens.  Still  their  disputes  with  the 
sovereign  prove  that  public  opinion  had  made  some  progress. 
In  1847,  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  in  Bohemia  determined 
to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  diets  of  the  other  German 
provinces,  and  with  that  of  Hungary.  When  the  year  1848  came, 
all  the  desiderata  of  the  diet  were  limited  to  demands  for  the 
representation  of  towns  in  the  parliament,  and  the  use  of  the 
Chekh  language  in  the  higher  schools.  The  assembly  had 
grown  almost  powerless,  because  it  was  composed  of  the 
privileged  classes  alone,  and  did  not  rest  on  the  main  body  of 
the  people.  But  beneath  this  worn-out  parliament  there  was 
the  people,  who  in  the  last  half-century  had  made  gigantic 
progress,  and  who  had  made  a  successful  beginning  in  the 
direction  of  intellectual  and  moral  emancipation  before  at- 
tempting to  emancipate  themselves  politically. 

The  new  literary  life  of  Bohemia,  during  the  first  forty 
years  of  this  century,  had  taken  almost  entirely  the  direction 
of  poetry  and  archaeology.  But  in  a  state  like  Austria,  based 
on  historical  rights,  it  was  impossible  but  that  the  study  of 
history  should  have  considerable  influence  on  men's  minds. 
When  they  read  the  treaties  concluded  between  the  kingdom 
and  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Habsburg,  patriots  could  not 
lielp  asking  what  had  become  of  the  various  stipulations.  The 
events  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War  recalled  the  memory  of  rebel- 
lions, prompted  by  generous  motives,  and  stifled  in  blood. 
The  Hussite  wars  reminded  them  of  a  great  epoch  of  moral 
and  intellectual  development,  of  the  abolition  of  liberty  of 
conscience,  and  of  the  religious  heroism  which  for  the  space 
of  half  a  century  had  made  a  small  people  into  a  great 
nation.  The  study  of  the  national  language  and  its  ancient 
literature  caused  a  fatal  reaction  against  Austrian  Germanism. 

The  citizen  class  now  began  to  take  a  pride  in  cultivating 
the  language  it  had  formerly  despised,  and  generous  minds 
found  a  wide  field  of  action  in  national  life,  since  political  life 


HA  VLICEK.  5  1  3 

had  no  existence  for  them.  Some  few  members  of  the  aris- 
tocracy joined  the  movement.  The  spirit  of  association, 
appHed  to  purely  Hterary  matters,  spread  with  astonishing 
rapidity.  The  Matitsa  Ceska  (Society  of  Popular  Literature) 
became  the  centre  of  literary  reform.  It  was  founded  in  1831 
with  fifteen  members;  by  1846  it  had  sixteen  hundred  and 
sixty-seven.  But  the  press  is  the  real  organ  of  political  life, 
and  down  to  1840  Bohemia  had  only  possessed  literary  news- 
papers. In  1846,  Charles  Havlicek,  a  man  of  great  talent, 
began  to  edit  the  Official  Gazette  of  Prague.  He  united  to 
sincere  patriotism  a  keen  and  biting  wit,  which  occasionally 
recalls  that  of  Voltaire  and  Heinrich  Heine.  He  well  under- 
stood that  his  country,  in  order  to  get  on,  must  learn  to  do 
without  the  governing  classes  and  the  feudal  system,  of  which 
the  ruins  still  remained.  He  appealed  directly  to  the  towns- 
people and  peasants.  When  he  first  arrived  in  Prague  there 
was  only  one  political  paper,  and  that  was  in  the  hands  of 
government.  But  Havlicek  found  means  to  plead  the  cause 
of  his  native  land.  He  chose  as  the  constant  subject  of  his 
articles  a  country  whose  fate  resembled  in  more  than  one 
particular  that  of  Bohemia;  he  painted  in  lively  colours  the 
woes  of  Ireland,  and  her  struggles  with  England  for  self- 
government.  He  was  understood  by  the  whole  of  Bohemia, 
and  the  word  "  Repeal  "  became  the  watchword  of  the  patriots. 
Havlicek's  position  in  Prague  was  much  the  same  as  that  of 
Kossuth  in  Pesth  and  Ljudevit  Gaj  at  Zagreb. 

The  agitation  which  began  in  Prague  spread  as  far  as 
Moravia,  and  even  to  the  Slovaks  of  Hungary.  It  was  not 
only  a  political,  but  also  a  social  and  religious  movement. 
The  patriots  interested  themselves  less  about  the  privileges 
of  the  nobles  than  the  wants  of  the  peasants,  who  had  so 
faithfully  guarded  the  treasures  of  the  national  language  and 
popular  poetry,  and  they  were  the  apostles  of  all  measures 
which  had  for  their  aim  the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of 
the  people.  At  the  same  time  the  memory  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  or   of  the  Hussite  War   alone   sufficed   to   make  them 

2    L 


514  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-IIU.VGARY. 

hostile  to  the  spirit  of  religious  intolerance  which   still  pre- 
vailed in  Vienna  in  official  circles. 

Public  Opinion  in  Hungary — The  Magyars  and  Slavism. 

There  are  two  opposite  tendencies  to  be  noticed  in  the 
history  of  modern  Hungary ;  one  the  real  and  generous 
patriotism  which  animates  the  Magyars  and  leads  them  to 
make  the  greatest  sacrifices  for  the  maintenance  of  their 
natural  and  acquired  rights ;  and  the  other  the  blind  egotism 
which  prevents  them  from  recognizing  the  same  rights  in 
others.  This  double  aspect  of  their  character  explains  both 
their  triumphs  and  their  reverses. 

By  the  end  of  1825  public  opinion  had  made  great  pro- 
gress in  Hungary.  Since  the  national  language  had  acquired 
the  right  to  be  spoken  on  the  tribune,  eloquent  orators  had 
become  numerous.  The  opposition  was  far  bolder  in  its 
attacks  on  government  than  was  the  case  either  at  Vienna 
or  Prague.  Wesselenyi,  Deak,  Szechenyi,  Boethy,  Kossuth, 
Eotvd,  and  Tel^ki,  rivalled  the  political  speakers  of  London 
and  Paris,  and  these  eminent  men  added  a  real  knowledge 
of  the  wants  of  the  nation  to  their  ardent  patriotism.  The 
session  of  1836  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable;  in  it  the 
opposition  vigorously  attacked  the  government  for  its  attempts 
to  place  hindrances  in  the  way  of  popular  education.  "  In 
future  the  nation  must  depend  upon  itself  alone,"  cried  Deak 
and  Beszeredy.  "  We  have  the  right  and  we  have  the  power," 
added  the  latter,  "  to  work  out  the  salvation  of  our  country 
for  ourselves."  When  the  diet  was  closed,  Kossuth  undertook 
to  supply  public  opinion  with  a  regular  account  of  all  the  de- 
liberations of  the  various  comitats,  and  for  this  he  and  some 
of  his  friends  were  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison.  The 
Royal  Table,  the  supreme  court  of  justice,  sided  with  the  con- 
servative government,  but  liberal  ideas  gained  ground  daily 
among  the  young  nobles,  some  among  whom  went  so  far  as 
to  declare  themselves  republicans. 

When    the    diet    met    again    in    1840,    the    government 


ALEXANDER  PETOFI.  515 

offered  to  set  free  the  political  prisoners  in  return  for  some  con- 
cessions from  the  opposition.  Deak,  who  from  this  time  began 
to  be  called  "  the  Wise,"  refused  the  offer  in  a  noble  speech. 
"  Our  duty  to  our  country,"  he  said,  "  is  greater  and  holier 
than  our  sympathies  for  our  friends.  Liberty  gained  at  such 
a  price  would  be  more  painful  to  them  than  all  their  suffer- 
ings." An  amnesty  was  temporarily  concluded  between  the 
parties.  Government  obtained  the  soldiers  it  wanted,  and  agreed 
that  the  Magyar  language  should  be  introduced  into  financial 
and  church  matters,  and  used  in  all  communications  with  the 
court.  The  diet  also  gave  its  final  consent  to  the  measures 
for  the  redemption  of  land  by  the  peasants  which  had  been 
introduced  in  the  previous  assembly.  After  1840  democratic 
ideas  gained  ground  rapidly.  Kossuth  started  the  Pesth 
Gazette  {Festi-Hirlap),  which  advocated  the  doctrines  of  equality 
in  eloquent  terms  ;  and  in  some  of  the  comitats  something  very 
like  revolutionary  clubs  began  to  spring  up.  And  yet  social 
progress  was  slow  \  and  the  law^  for  taxing  all  citizens  alike, 
which  was  proposed  to  the  diet  in  1843,  notwithstanding  all 
the  efforts  of  Szechenzi,  failed  to  pass. 

It  was  now  that  Alexander  Petofi,  a  young  poet  born 
among  the  people,  began  to  publish  his  ardent  odes,  inspired 
by  an  intense  love  for  his  country  and  an  unbridled  passion 
for  liberty.  "  In  times  of  old,  Hungary  was  a  sea  in  which 
were  extinguished  the  stars  which  fell  from  the  north,  the  east, 
and  the  south.  The  glory  of  Hungary  is  like  the  comet  which 
disappears,  and  at  the  end  of  centuries  returns  shining  and 
terrible."  Another  poet,  Vorosmarty,  who  was  more  of  a  con- 
servative than  Petofi,  exclaims  in  his  famous  " Szozat"  ("The 
Appeal "),  "  My  people  wishes  for  either  life  or  death ;  it 
has  suffered  for  a  thousand  years,  and  if  death  must  come  it 
will  be  buried  in  a  land  bathed  in  blood."  Arany,  Kisfaludy, 
and  others  also  roused  patriotic  feeling  by  their  poems  on  the 
past  history  of  Hungary. 

"  We  must  form  the  nation  anew  out  of  fresh  elements," 
wrote  Kossuth  in  his  paper ;  and  yet,  strangely  enough,  one  of 


5l6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  strongest  complaints  against  the  government  among  the 
patriots  was  the  progress  of  Slavism  among  the  Croats  and 
Slovaks ;  their  selfishness  led  them  to  blame  in  others  the 
very  aspirations  which  they  honoured  among  themselves.  It 
was  they  who,  together  with  the  Polish  refugees  and  the 
Germans,  invented  the  red  spectre  of  Panslavism  in  order  to 
supply  themselves  with  a  reason  for  fighting  it,  and  for  per- 
secuting their  Servian,  Slovak,  and  Croat  fellow-countrymen. 
It  was  by  no  means  the  interest  of  Austria  to  create  a  state 
of  things  which  might  turn  to  the  advantage  of  Russia  •  and 
yet,  with  the  possibility  before  it  of  a  struggle  with  the 
Magyars,  it  could  not  lend  its  aid  to  crush  the  peoples 
who  simply  claimed  a  right  to  exist.  Nothing,  however, 
could  have  been  less  wise  than  the  efforts  of  government  to 
thwart  liberty,  trade,  and  commerce  among  the  Hungarians. 
At  one  time  they  hoped  to  put  an  end  to  Hungarian  obstinacy 
by  attacking  the  freedom  of  the  country  at  its  very  source,  the 
institution  of  the  comitats.  The  foispan,  or  chief  count,  was 
often  a  great  noble,  who,  away  for  part  of  the  year,  appointed 
an  alispan,  or  administrator,  to  act  for  him  during  his  absence. 
The  chancellor,  Apponyi,  replaced  \\\t's,&  foispanak  dwelling  in 
the  country  by  royal  officials.  But  this  attack  on  the  ancient 
privilege  of  self-government  roused  the  greatest  irritation 
throughout  the  land ;  the  new  officials  were  compared  to  the 
captains  of  Austrian  circles  {Kreis-Hanptmcinfier)  and  to  French 
prefects,  and  such  language  was  considered  the  height  of  abuse 
in  the  parliament  of  Pozsony  (Pressburg).  But  the  comparison 
was  unjust,  for  these  administrators  possessed  unlimited  power, 
and  did  not  depend  on  responsible  ministers  as  do  the  French 
prefects.  Some  among  them  were  guilty  of  acts  of  unjustifiable 
violence.  The  task  of  the  new  officials  was  made  extremely 
difficult  by  the  obstinate  patriotism  and  the  love  of  legality 
which  has  always  characterized  the  Hungarians.  Deak,  at  Zala, 
was  one  of  the  first  to  organize  a  resistance  to  them.  Follow- 
ing ancient  precedent,  he  wrote  to  all  the  comitats  of  the  king- 
dom, and  got  them    to  vote  that  the  appointment  of  these 


DEAR'S  PROCLAMATION.  517 

royal  commissioners  was  illegal,  and  that  the  diet  should 
decide  what  should  be  done  about  them  before  proceeding 
to  any  other  business. 

The  diet  of  1847  opened  in  tolerable  quiet,  although 
Kossuth,  in  spite  of  government  opposition,  had  been  elected 
at  Pesth.  The  emperor  and  his  family  were  present  at  the 
first  debate,  and  showed  an  affection  for  the  Magyar  language 
which  touched  the  hearts  of  the  patriots.  The  palatine  Joseph 
had  died  recently  in  the  enjoyment  of  great  popularity,  and 
his  son  Stephen  was  now  chosen  palatine  in  his  stead.  The 
debate  on  the  speech  from  the  throne  gave  rise  to  animated 
discussion.  The  opposition  was  anxious  first  of  all  to  secure 
the  autonomy  of  the  co?nitats  by  depriving  the  crown  of  its 
power  of  appointing  the  royal  administrators ;  the  upper 
chamber  wished  to  treat  the  king  more  courteously.  It  was 
finally  decided  that  there  should  be  no  reply  to  the  king's 
speech.  While  Kossuth  inflamed  men's  minds  by  his 
eloquence,  Szechenyi  did  his  best  to  keep  his  countrymen  in 
the  paths  of  law  and  moderation. 

The  opposition  programme  drawn  up  by  Deak,  who  had 
received  from  his  countrymen  the  name  of  "the  Wise,"  clearly 
describes  the  position  of  the  kingdom  towards  the  rest  of  the 
empire. 

"  Hungary,"  says  this  remarkable  document,  "  is  a  free 
country,  independent  in  its  whole  system  of  legislation  and 
administration  ;  it  is  subordinate  to  no  other  country.  '\\'e 
have  no  wish  to  oppose  the  interests  of  our  country  to  the 
unity  of  the  monarchy  or  the  security  of  its  existence.  But 
we  consider  that  it  is  contrary  to  law  and  justice  that  the 
interests  of  Hungary  should  be  made  subordinate  to  those  of 
any  country  whatsoever.  .  .  .  We  will  never  consent  that  they 
shall  be  sacrificed  to  the  unity  of  the  system  of  government. 
.  .  .  Our  constitutional  life  is  a  treasure  which  we  cannot 
sacrifice  either  to  foreign  interests  or  to  material  advantages, 
howsoever  great.  Our  first  duty  is  to  preserve  and  strengthen 
It.     \Ve  are  convinced  that  if  the  Hereditary  Provinces  were 


5  1 8  HISTOR  Y  OF  A  USTRO-HUNGAR  Y. 

now  in  the  enjoyment  of  their  ancient  freedom,  or  if,  in 
obedience  to  the  needs  of  the  time  and  of  justice,  they  could 
take  their  place  among  constitutional  governments,  our 
interests  and  theirs,  which  are  now  so  often  divided,  and 
even  at  times  opposed,  would  be  found  to  agree  more  easily. 
.  .  .  The  monarchy,  growing  in  both  material  and  intellectual 
strength,  would  be  able  to  resist  more  surely  those  storms 
which  time  and  the  course  of  events  may  some  day  bring." 

Men's  minds  were  also  passionately  excited  about  the 
language  to  be  used  by  government.  A  bill  was  submitted 
for  the  royal  sanction  containing  the  following  proposals  : — 
Magyar  shall  in  future  be  the  official  language  of  the  king- 
dom ;  documents  written  in  any  other  shall  not  be  legal. 
In  the  Slav  comitats  of  Pozega,  Virovitica,  and  Syrmia,  Latin 
shall  be  tolerated  for  the  next  six  years;  Croatia  must  use 
Magyar  in  all  its  communications  with  the  central  govern- 
ment ;  and  this  language  shall  be  taught  in  all  schools  through- 
out the  kingdom.  Hungarian  publicists  meant  to  imitate  the 
example  of  France,  which  had  made  the  dialect  of  the  capital 
take  the  place  of  patois  and  of  all  the  provincial  dialects ;  but 
they  forgot  that  Magyar  was  not  yet  so  cultivated  a  language  as 
French,  and  that  those  who  spoke  it  were  only  a  minority  in 
the  kingdom.  The  French  of  Paris  had  only  had  to  absorb 
and  master  similar  dialects,  just  as  Castilian  has  overcome 
other  dialects  in  Spain  and  Tuscan  in  Italy,  Such  alien 
languages  as  survived,  as  the  Basque,  Bas-Breton,  and  the 
German  of  Alsace,  were  only  spoken  by  minorities.  Besides, 
France  was  a  country  where  centralization  had  long  prevailed, 
where  provincial  autonomy  had  long  ceased,  and  where,  finally, 
the  French  revolution  had  come  to  fuse  the  various  historical 
elements  into  one  whole.  The  example  of  France  was,  there- 
fore, scarcely  to  the  point. 


STATE   OF  CROATIA.  519 

The  Races  in  Hungary. 

The  moment  has  now  come  in  which  we  may  usefully 
recall  how  Hungary  had  been  formed,  and  what  elements 
were  grouped  around  the  Magyars  hostile  to  their  supremacy. 

Croatia  had  been  annexed  to  Hungary  for  many  centuries, 
but  formed  no  integral  part  of  it.  With  the  provinces  of 
Slavonia  and  Dalmatia,  it  looked  upon  itself  as  a  threefold 
kingdom  {Troj'Jedina  Kraljevimi),  whose  capital  was  Zagreb 
(Agram).  But,  in  fact,  Dalmatia  was  a  separate  province, 
since  Austria  had  captured  it  from  the  Venetians,  and  had 
always  refused  to  give  it  up  either  to  the  Hungarians  or  to  the 
Croats.  At  the  head  of  Croatia  and  Slavonia  there  was  a  high 
official  called  the  ban,  who  was  a  viceroy  invested  with 
civil  and  military  power,  and  with  the  right  of  summoning 
the  diet  or  general  assembly.  This  was  composed  by  the 
orders  of  the  comitats  of  Croatia  (Varazdin,  Krizevac,  and 
Zagreb)  and  the  delegates  of  the  three  Slavonian  comitats  of 
whom  we  have  already  spoken.  In  its  turn  this  diet  sent  into 
Hungary  one  deputy  to  the  Table  of  Magnates  and  two  to  the 
Table  of  Estates,  The  four  free  towns  of  Croatia  were  also 
represented  in  the  Table  of  Estates,  and  a  certain  number  of 
Croat  and  Slavonian  magnates  had  seats  in  their  own  right  in 
the  upper  house.  The  diet  of  Agram  reserved  to  itself  the 
right  of  sanctioning  the  laws  voted  at  Pressburg.  The  link 
which  united  Croatia  to  Hungary  was  ill-defined.  Hungary 
looked  upon  Croatia  as  a  conquered  land,  but  Croatia  con- 
sidered that  no  tie  but  a  personal  one  bound  her  to  Hungary, 
and  she  never  forgot  that  the  Pragmatic  Sanction  of  Charles  VI. 
had  been  voted  by  Croatia  before  it  was  voted  by  Hungary. 
As  long  as  Latin  had  been  the  language  in  use  between  the  two 
states  there  had  been  no  antagonism  ;  but  the  struggle  began 
the  moment  that  the  Magyars  tried  to  force  the  Magyar  language 
into  use,  and  the  Croats,  throwing  off  Latin,  succeeded  in  creating 
an  independent  literature  of  their  own.  We  have  already  seen 
what  were  the  character  and  influence  of  this  literature. 


520  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  Illyrian  or  Jougo-Slav  movement  could  not  but  be 
disagreeable  to  the  Magyars,  but  they  made  a  great  mistake 
when  they  opposed  it,  pretending  to  see  in  it  the  hand  of 
Russia,  and  denouncing  it  as  the  work  of  a  Panslavist  move- 
ement  which  had  no  existence  in  reality.  They  paid  dearly 
for  their  blindness. 

The  grievances  of  the  Servians  were  still  more  serious  than 
those  of  the  Croats.  In  1792,  the  Magyars  had  had  the  Illyrian 
chancery  done  away  with,  and  the  Servians,  looked  upon  with 
suspicion,  were  deprived  of  all  political  employment,  and  only 
allowed  to  occupy  public  positions  in  the  camp  or  in  mon- 
asteries. The  emancipation  of  their  relatives  who  had  risen 
against  the  Turks  under  Milosh  Obrenovitch,  and  had  formed 
themselves  into  an  independent  principality,  had  helped  to 
rouse  their  patriotism,  and  as  early  as  1826  they  had  founded 
a  literary  society  at  Pesth  called  the  Matitsa^  which  served  as 
a  model  for  a  number  of  similar  institutions  in  the  Slav 
countries. 

The  military  frontier  was  chiefly  inhabited  by  Slavs  and 
Roumanians  who  were  subject,  as  we  have  already  seen,  to  a 
separate  form  of  government,  and  were  ready,  either  out  of  an 
instinct  of  military  obedience  to  the  claims  of  the  dynasty,  or 
out  of  a  feehng  of  patriotism,  to  join  in  the  demands  of  their 
Slav  or  Roumanian  fellow-countrymen. 

In  the  northern  comitats  the  Slovaks  had  long  been  treated 
as  if  they  were  Helots.  '•'■  Toth  ember  nem  ember"  ("The 
Slovak  man  is  not  a  man  "),  said  the  Magyar  proverb.  But  the 
Slovaks  could  not  remain  indifferent  to  the  movement  which 
stirred  Bohemia.  Two  of  its  best  writers,  Safarik,  the  author 
of  "  Slav  Antiquities,"  and  Kollar,  the  poet  of  Panslavism,  were 
both  Slovaks.  They  hoped  to  be  able  to  create  a  national 
literature  apart  from  that  of  Bohemia.  Stur,  Hodza,  and 
Urban,  all  men  of  ability,  were  at  the  head  of  the  movement, 
which  claimed  a  place  for  their  race  among  civilized  nations, 
and  from  the  year  1843  they  sent  up  their  claims  to  the  courts 
of  Vienna  with  energy,  but  with  no  effect.    Their  neighbours, 


TRANS  YL  VANIA.  5  2  I 

the  Ruthenians,  or  Little  Russians,  began  also  to  awake  under 
the  influence  of  the  Slav  movement. 

Ever  since  its  re-annexation  in  1699  the  principality  of 
Transylvania  had  been  governed  directly  from  Vienna,  but  had 
had  a  diet  of  its  own  which  sat  at  Kolosvar  (Klausenburg). 
There  was  a  Transylvanian  chancery  at  Vienna  and  a  Giibernium 
regium  at  Szeben  (Hermannstadt).  In  this  province,  as  in  all  the 
rest  of  the  kingdom  of  St.  Stephen,  with  the  exception  of 
Croatia  and  the  purely  Magyar  lands,  the  majority  of  the 
nation  was  crushed  by  the  ruling  minority.  The  Hungarians 
who  numbered  500,000,  the  Szeklers  who  were  170,000,  and 
the  Saxons  who  were  300,000,  were  all  represented  in  the  diet, 
where  the  1,250,000  Wallachians  had  not  a  single  representa- 
tive ;  but  the  time  was  not  far  off  when  these  Wallachians  were 
to  claim  their  political  rights.  In  1834,  the  Magyar  deputies 
in  the  diet  of  Transylvania  uttered  words  bolder  perhaps  even 
than  those  used  by  their  colleagues  at  Pozsony.  "  We  are  here 
as  the  representatives  of  a  free  people  !"  exclaimed  Charles 
Huszar.  "Who  is  above  us?  No  one.  In  front  of  us  there 
is  the  sovereign,  but  above  us,  I  repeat,  there  is  no  one." 
Wesselenyi  himself  undertook  to  print  a  report  of  the  stormy 
discussions,  in  defiance  of  the  censorship  of  the  press.  The 
emperor  Ferdinand  dissolved  the  assembly  angrily,  while  the 
Hungarians,  on  their  side,  continued  their  demand  that  the 
principality  should  be  reunited  to  the  mother-country  from 
which  it  had  been  so  long  separated.  There  was  no  want  of 
pretexts  for  a  quarrel ;  the  slightest  breath  of  revolution  would 
suffice  to  kindle  the  flames  of  discord  in  the  Magyar  Orszag. 

Ptiblic  Opinion  ifi  Vienna. 

In  Vienna  also  liberal  opinions  began  to  be  heard ; 
popular  education  had  made  progress,  in  spite  of  all  the 
hindrances  put  in  its  way  by  government ;  bureaucracy  had 
become  the  object  of  hatred  to  the  people,  and  all  the  internal 
miseries  of  the  empire  were  attributed  to  it.  Metternich,  too, 
was  growing  old,  and  since  the   difficulties   in  the  East  had 


522  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

shown  himself  weary  of  his  post.  Down  to  1830,  Vienna 
had  been  a  luxurious  and  indolent  city,  devoting  itself  to 
music  and  sensual  pleasure — the  Capua  of  the  mind,  as  it  had 
been  called  by  the  Viennese  poet,  Grillparzer.  But  gradually 
the  minds  of  the  people  had  been  awakened,  in  spite  of  the 
detestable  system  of  education  which  prevailed  even  in  the 
higher  schools,  the  sole  result  of  which  was  to  teach  boys  how 
to  read  Latin  but  indifferently.  The  number  of  distinguished 
men  produced  by  Austria  during  this  period  is  certainly  very 
small;  a  Karajan,  a  Ferdinand  Wolf,  Hammer-Purgstall  the 
orientalist,  and  a  i^vj  doctors.  Palacky  and  Safarik  cannot  be 
counted  in  the  list  because,  though  they  occasionally  wrote  in 
German,  they  belong  to  the  race  of  the  Slavs  and  are  com- 
pletely Slav  in  feeling.  In  literature,  properly  so  called,  with 
the  exception  of  a  few  Viennese  song-writers  who  composed 
in  the  dialect  of  the  capital,  only  three  names  can  be  quoted 
— Grillparzer,  the  author  of  "  Die  Ahnfrau,"  who  belonged  to 
the  romantic  school  without  knowing  it ;  the  lyric  poet  Anthony 
Auersperg,  better  known  as  Anastasius  Griin ;  and  the  elegant 
writer  Lenau.  But  not  one  among  them  can  be  considered  a 
man  of  genius.  In  his  "Walks  of  a  Viennese  Poet,"  Anastasius 
Griin  gave  the  emperor  some  wise  though  useless  advice.  He 
says,  "Open  thy  heart  to  thy  people.  Give  them  weapons 
bright  and  steel-pointed,  the  right  to  speak  and  to  write  freely  \ 
give  them  gold  pure  and  unalloyed,  liberty  under  the  protection 
of  law.  Thy  people  would  become  as  rich  as  the  soil  of 
Austria  had  it  only  liberty." 

In  1847,  the  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Vienna  was  founded 
by  Ferdinand  ;  it  is  now  one  of  the  most  flourishing  in  Europe. 
In  order  to  gain  some  literary  credit  for  Austria  in  foreign 
countries,  the  government  supported  the  Viennese  Literary 
Review  ("  Wietier  Jahrhi/cher  der  Literatur"),  the  only  publi- 
cation which  never  had  to  complain  of  the  censors,  and  that 
because  it  was  edited  in  great  measure  by  them.  Up  to 
1848,  the  censorship  of  the  press  was  the  greatest  scourge  to 
the  country ;  its  power  had  never  been  defined  by  any  law. 


CENSORSHIP  OF  THE  PRESS.  523 

The  contraband  sale  of  books,  however,  proved  an  antidote 
to  it,  and  was  largely  carried  on,  prohibition  only  exciting 
public  curiosity,  and  calling  attention  to  the  forbidden  fruit. 
Pamphlets  introduced  in  this  way  made  up  for  the  silence  of 
the  press.  It  was  quite  evident  to  any  attentive  observer  that 
the  people  which  had  been  so  long  kept  down  would  rise 
at  the  first  opportunity,  and  must  commit  grave  mistakes  when 
first  they  were  called  upon  to  enjoy  the  liberty  of  which  they 
had  been  so  long  deprived. 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1848. 

Fall  of  Metternich — The  First  Ausirian  Constitution. 

No  country  has  so  tangled  a  history  to  offer  us  of  any  period 
of  its  existence  as  Austria  during  the  years  1848-49.  In  a 
united  country  revolution  has  but  one  centre  towards  which 
all  the  provincial  movements  gravitate  ;  but  here  we  have  to 
follow  popular  risings  in  Vienna,  Venice,  Pesth,  Prague, 
Zagreb  (Agram),  and  Lwow  (Lemberg),  all  at  the  same  time. 
Within  this  empire  three  great  races  felt  simultaneously  the 
sudden  shock,  and  rushed  towards  liberty  by  three  different  and 
opposite  paths,  and  their  various  interests  and  old  rivalries  led 
to  conflicts  among  themselves,  which  rendered  their  generous 
efforts  of  no  avail  and  for  a  long  time  destroyed  their  hopes. 

If  ever  sovereign  was  unfit  to  hold  his  own  against  the 
passions  of  the  populace,  assuredly  Ferdinand  IV.,  surnamed 
the  Beneficent,  was  he.  The  news  of  the  24th  of  February 
struck  him  and  his  councillors  like  a  thunder-clap.  Austria 
was  not  now,  as  in  1830,  separated  from  revolutionary  France 
by  a  reactionary  Germany.  The  German  princes,  either 
affected  by  the  current  or  overwhelmed  by  it,  were  granting 
constitutions  on  all  sides  to  their  subjects,  whether  those 
subjects  were  in  revolt  or  not,  and  the  new  ideas  which  came 
from  Paris  were  passed  on  to  Vienna  by  Germany  herself 

On  the  nth  of  March,  an  address  was  presented  in  the 
diet  of  Lower  Austria  which  demanded  the  immediate  publi- 


FALL    OF  METTERNICH.  525 

cation  of  the  budget ;  the  convocation  at  regular  intervals  of 
an  assembly  composed,  not  only  of  the  privileged  orders, 
but  of  representatives  of  all  classes  of  the  community ;  the 
liberty  of  the  press  ;  the  publicity  of  courts  of  justice  ;  and 
new  municipal  and  communal  institutions.  Two  days  later 
the  students  of  the  university  went  in  procession  to  carry  this 
petition  to  the  Estates,  and  the  troops  tried  to  disperse  them 
in  vain.  The  crowd,  with  cries  of  "  Down  with  Metternich  ! " 
burned  the  house  of  the  man  who  had  so  long  controlled 
the  destinies  of  the  empire,  and  the  diet  itself  demanded  the 
dismissal  of  the  chancellor.  He  quitted  the  town  in  a  washer- 
woman's cart  and  fled  to  England. 

"  The  last  beam  of  the  old  system  has  given  way ;  or,  to 
speak  more  respectfully  of  so  experienced  a  statesman,  prince 
Metternich  has  been  compelled  to  retire  from  a  contest  which 
he  can  no  longer  wage  with  the  world,  or  even  with  the  public 
opinion  of  the  pacific  inhabitants  of  Lower  Austria.  .  .  . 

"  Indeed,  whilst  the  changes  and  perils  of  the  most  extra- 
ordinary half-century  in  the  history  of  mankind  have  rolled  to 
and  fro  upon  the  tides  of  time,  the  spectacle  of  that  old  man, 
whose  reign  commenced  when  our  fathers  were  still  young 
men,  seated  in  immutable  decrepitude  at  his  wonted  seat, 
seemed  the  sole  remaining  thing  of  an  age  that  is  past,  and 
was  itself  the  empire  in  the  eyes  of  a  younger  race.  That,  too, 
is  gone — the  oldest  minister  of  the  oldest  court  has  been 
driven  from  office — even  the  cabinet  of  Austria  must  be 
renewed.  .  .  ;  After  forty  years  of  this  unlimited  sway  he  leaves 
an  empire  by  so  much  in  arrear  of  the  rest  of  Europe — im- 
poverished in  its  finances — divided  in  its  provinces — and  not 
obscurely  threatened  in  its  most  important  possessions.  .  .  ." 
(The  Times,  Monday,  March  21,  1848.     First  leader.) 

The  emperor  found  himself  obliged  to  authorize  the  arming 
of  the  students,  and  their  formation  into  a  regiment,  and  the 
establishment  of  the  national  guard.  He  invited  the  various 
provinces  of  the  empire  to  send  delegates  to  Vienna  on  the 
following  3rd  of  July,  and  announced  the  suppression  of  the 


526  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

censorship  of  the  press  and  the  publication  of  a  liberal  press 
law;  but  at  the  same  time  he  ordered  a  state  of  siege  to  be 
proclaimed  by  Windischgratz.      His  promises  of  reform  were 
believed,  and  Vienna  was  illuminated.     Kolovrat  was  named 
president  of  the  council,  and  count  Ficquelmont  minister  of 
the  interior.     On  the  ist  of  April,  Ficquelmont  became  head 
of  the  cabinet.     Little  confidence  was  felt  in    this  pupil   of 
Metternich,  but  he  seemed  to  be  in  earnest  in  playing  his  part 
as  a  reforming  minister,  and  it  was  he  who  prepared  the  con- 
stitution which  was  published  on  the  following  25th  of  April. 
It  was  mainly  copied  from  the  Belgian  Charter,  and  it  paid  no 
attention  to  the  peculiar  construction  of  the  Austrian  empire, 
and   the   conflict    between    the  various   historical   rights  and 
nationalities.       It    left    out    Lombardy    and    Hungary,    and 
established  two   houses — a  senate    composed   of  the  princes 
of  the  royal  family,  members  nominated  for  life  by  the  sove- 
reign, and  the  owners   of  large  landed  estates  ;  and  a  lower 
house,  or  chamber  of  deputies,   which   was  to  contain   three 
hundred   and   eighty-three   elected    members.      This    consti- 
tution also  secured  what  have  been  called  the  three  neces- 
sary liberties — liberty  of  conscience,  liberty  of  the  press,  and 
the  right   of  public  meeting.      It  paid    no   attention  to   the 
various  races,  nor  to  the  engagements  so  lately  entered  into 
by  the  emperor  with  Bohemia  (8th  of  April).     This  charter 
was  proclaimed  with  great  pomp,  but  it  did   not  succeed  in 
calming   the   distrust   which  was    felt   towards    Ficquelmont ; 
a  popular  rising  on  the  4th  of  May  obliged  him  to  give  in  his 
resignation,  and  he  was  replaced  by  Pillersdorf.     This  minister 
drew  up   an   electoral   law,  which  carefully  excluded  all  the 
working-classes.     Public  excitement  increased  in  Vienna,  and 
the  emperor  seemed  inclined  to  give  way,  for  on  the  16th  of 
May  he  agreed  to  the  establishment  of  one  chamber  to  be 
elected  by  universal   suffrage.     The   next   day,  however,   he 
left  Vienna  and  fled  to   Innsbruck.     The   inhabitants  of  the 
capital  were  both  surprised  and  puzzled  by  this  flight  of  the 
sovereign ;  they  were  still  too  much  influenced  by  old  ideas 


CONCESSIONS  TO  BOHEMIA.  527 

about  the  monarchy  to  venture  to  possess  themselves  of  the 
administrative.  Besides,  the  various  nationaUties  which  made 
up  the  empire  were  not  wiUing  to  follow  the  lead  of  the  capital 
like  the  people  of  most  other  countries.  There  were  a  few 
barricades  erected  and  a  few  lives  lost,  but  on  the  whole  the 
emperor's  rule  may  be  said  to  have  remained  unquestioned. 

Pillersdorf  remained  at  his  post,  and  the  archduke  John 
was  empowered  to  form  a  ministry  at  Vienna.  He  chose 
one  of  slightly  more  liberal  opinions  than  the  preceding  one, 
having  Doblhofif  as  minister  of  the  interior,  and  Alexander 
Bach  as  minister  of  justice.  By  the  beginning  of  July,  the 
delegates  from  the  states  which  were  to  be  represented  in  the 
parliament  began  to  arrive;  but,  meantime,  events  had 
occurred  in  the  provinces  which  left  no  doubt  that  this 
assembly  was  not  destined  to  play  an  important  part  or  to 
restore  peace  to  Austria,  now  shaken  to  her  very  foundations. 

Concessions  to  Bohemia — Palacky  and  the  Frankfort 
Farliafnent. 

In  Bohemia  the  revolution  broke  out  two  days  earlier  than 
in  Vienna.  The  signal  had  been  given  by  a  liberal  club,  which 
bore  the  significant  name  of  Repeal.  A  meeting  was  held  on 
the  nth  of  March,  in  the  Baths  of  St.  Vacslav,  when  a  petition 
was  drawn  up  which  demanded  that  Moravia  and  Silesia  should 
be  united  to  Bohemia  under  one  administration,  that  the  position 
of  the  peasants  should  be  improved,  and  also  public  education. 
These  were  very  moderate  demands,  but  the  news  of  the  rising  in 
Vienna  soon  made  the  Bohemian  patriots  bolder.  The  Chekh 
students  formed  themselves  into  a  regiment ;  a  committee 
which  called  itself  the  Petition  Committee  sat  continually,  and 
national  life  developed  in  all  manner  of  ways  with  unexpected 
vigour.  Soon  a  second  petition  was  drawn  up,  which  called 
for  the  reconstitution  of  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia,  with  one 
single  and  central  diet  meeting  at  Prague,  the  appointment  of 
a  responsible  ministry  for  the  country  of  St.  Vacslav,  and  the 
recognition  of  equal  rights  (gleich-berechtigung)  for  the  Bohemian 


528  HISTORY  OF  AUST^O-HUNGARY. 

and  German  races.  A  deputation  went  to  Vienna  to  represent 
the  wishes  of  the  Chekhs,  and  was  not  unfavourably  received. 
The  question  of  the  annexation  of  Moravia  and  Silesia  was 
adjourned  to  the  meeting  of  the  central  parliament,  but  the 
government  guaranteed  the  equality  of  the  two  races,  promised 
to  convoke  a  diet  for  the  kingdom  based  on  universal  suffrage, 
and  offered  to  pass  a  certain  number  of  laws  giving  them 
control  over  their  own  aflfairs  (April  8th).  A  national  com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  prepare  these  measures  of  reform ; 
but  the  autonomy  of  Bohemia,  however  restricted,  by  no  means 
pleased  the  Germans  at  Vienna,  who  meant  to  remain  at  the 
head  of  the  empire,  nor  the  Hungarians,  who  were  at  constant 
variance  with  the  Slavs  and  terrified  by  the  mere  idea  of  Pan- 
slavism.  Still  less  did  it  satisfy  the  Germans  within  Bohemia,  who 
maintained  that  the  kingdom  belonged  to  Germany  by  virtue  of 
the  treaty  of  Vienna  and  ancient  right,  and  who  looked  forward 
to  its  forming  one  of  the  columns  of  their  great  German  empire. 
The  committee  of  fifty,  which  met  at  Frankfort,  to  prepare  for 
the  convocation  of  the  German  parliament,  had  invited  Palacky 
to  take  part  in  their  deliberations,  and  the  national  historian 
replied  by  a  celebrated  letter  which  clearly  explains  the  situa- 
tion of  Bohemia  and  Austria  as  regarded  the  new  Germany. 

"  The  aim  which  you  propose  to  yourselves,"  said  Palacky, 
"  is  the  substitution  of  a  federation  of  peoples  for  the  old  federa- 
tion of  princes,  to  unite  the  German  nation  in  a  real  union,  to 
strengthen  the  sentiment  of  German  nationality,  to  secure  the 
greatness  of  Germany  within  and  without.  I  honour  your 
efforts  and  the  feelings  by  which  you  are  inspired,  but  at  the 
same  time  I  cannot  share  them.  I  am  not  a  German,  or  at 
least  I  do  not  feel  as  if  I  were  one,  and,  assuredly,  you  have 
no  wish  that  I  should  join  you  merely  as  a  supernumerary,  with 
neither  opinion  nor  wish  of  my  own.  ...  I  am  a  Chekh,  of 
Slav  origin,  and  whatever  I  am  worth  is  at  the  service  of  my 
country.  It  is  true  that  my  nation  is  small,  but  from  the  be- 
ginning it  has  possessed  an  historical  individuality.  Its  princes 
have  acted  in  concert  with  the  German  princes,  but  the  people 


SLAV  CONGRESS  AT  PRAGUE.  529 

itself  has  never  been  considered  German.  .  .  .  Besides,  you  wish 
to  enfeeble  Austria  for  ever,  to  make  it  impossible  for  her  to 
exist  as  an  independent  nation.  Now,  the  maintenance  of  the 
integrity  and  the  development  of  Austria  is  of  vast  importance, 
not  only  to  my  people,  but  to  the  whole  of  Europe,  to  civiliza- 
tion, and  the  human  race." 

The  Germans  have  never  forgiven  the  Chekh  historian  for 
declaring  that  he  did  not  belong  to  their  race.  Pillersdorf  was 
either  less  Austrian  in  feeling  than  Palacky  or  else  understood 
the  interests  of  the  monarchy  differently,  for  he  gave  orders  that 
the  elections  for  the  parliament  at  Frankfort  should  be  pro- 
ceeded with.  The  Bohemian  Germans  wished  to  obey,  the 
Chekhs  energetically  refused  ;  hence  arose  disputes  which  led 
to  grave  disturbances  and  to  an  acute  crisis  between  the  two 
races  who  unequally  divided  Bohemia  between  them. 

The  Slav  Congress  at  Prague. 
When  the  Austrian  constitution  was  published  on  the  25th 
of  April,  popular  irritation  rose  to  its  height,  for  no  reference 
was  made  in  it  to  the  engagements  entered  into  by  the  govern- 
ment with  Bohemia  only  a  few  days  before.  On  the  flight  of 
the  emperor  to  Innsbriick,  the  Chekhs,  not  wishing  to  obey  his 
ministers,  had  appointed  a  sort  of  provisional  government,  a 
"  Lieutenant's  Council,"  to  aid  the  imperial  lieutenant,  count  Leo 
Thun  ;  and  when  Leo  Thun  summoned  the  diet  of  the  kingdom, 
some  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the  patriots  joined  together  in 
convoking  a  Slav  congress  at  Prague.  It  was  the  counterpart 
of  the  German  parliament  at  Frankfort.  The  Slavs  from  all 
parts  of  the  monarchy  met  there  for  the  first  time  in  common 
action.  The  proclamation  of  the  committee  was  signed, 
among  others,  by  Safarik,  Mathias  Thun,  Rieger,  Miklosich, 
and  Lubomirski,  and  ran  as  follows  :  "  Brothers,  who  has  not 
looked  on  the  past  history  of  our  race  with  sorrow?  Who 
does  not  know  that  our  sufferings  have  been  the  result  of  the 
ignorance  in  which  we  have  all  remained,  of  our  quarrels,  and 
of  our  scattered  position  ?     After  centuries  of  misery  we  have 

2    Vi 


530  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

at  last  become  aware  of  our  unity,  our  responsibility  for  each 
other."  The  congress  was  divided  into  three  sections — the 
Chekh  (Bohemia,  Moravia,  and  Slovak  territory),  the  Polish- 
Ruthenian,  and  the  Croats  and  Servians.  What  are  the  rela- 
tions of  the  Slavs  of  Austria  among  themselves?  What  are 
their  relations  with  the  Germans,  the  Magyars,  and  the  Slavs 
under  Turkish  rule  ?  What  ought  to  be  their  attitude  towards 
other  nations  and  towards  the  parliament  of  Frankfort?  On 
what  conditions  would  it  be  possible  to  form  Austria  into  a 
Federal  State  ?  Ought  the  decisions  of  the  German  congress 
at  Frankfort  to  be  accepted  by  the  Slav  countries  of  Austria  ? — 
such  were  the  questions  which  the  congress  had  to  consider. 

It  was  also  proposed  to  address  a  manifesto  to  the  nations 
of  Europe  which  should  make  them  acquainted  with  the 
opinions  of  a  race  which  had  been  hitherto  too  little  con- 
sidered, and  which  was  known  almost  entirely  in  foreign  lands 
through  the  calumnies  of  its  enemies.  The  number  of  Chekh, 
Moravian,  and  Slovak  delegates  was  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
seven  ;  of  Poles  and  Ruthenians  forty-one ;  of  Croats  and  Ser- 
vians forty-two.  Unfortunately,  while  the  congress  was  occupied 
with  its  peaceable  discussions  a  riot  broke  out  at  Prague.  The 
cause  of  this  riot  has  always  remained  unknown,  and  the  Hun- 
garians, who  were  anxious,  at  any  cost,  to  bring  about  the 
failure  of  the  congress,  have  been  accused  of  having  excited  it. 
However  that  may  be,  shots  were  exchanged  between  the 
students  and  the  soldiers  on  the  12th  of  June;  the  wife  of 
prince  Windischgratz,  the  military  commandant,  was  killed  in 
her  own  house  ;  barricades  were  raised,  and  the  commando, 
firmly  established  in  the  higher  part  of  the  town,  in  which 
stands  the  well-known  fortress  of  Prague  (Hradschin  or 
Hradcany),  bombarded  the  lower  town,  which  surrendered 
at  discretion.  The  congress  was  dissolved  and  Prague  pro- 
claimed to  be  in  a  state  of  siege.  Councils  of  war  sat 
continually,  and  the  diet  of  the  kingdom  was  not  convoked. 
Very  soon  after  this  the  elections  for  the  assembly  at  Vienna 
took  place,  and  the  Germans  in  Bohemia  sent  as  their  repre- 


G ALICIA   AND   ITALY,  53  I 

sentatives  those  amongst  their  compatriots  who  were  known  to 
be  most  opposed  to  Slav  interests.  They  were  thinking  more 
of  a  greater  Germany  than  of  Austria,  and  seemed  to  consider 
every  effort  of  the  Chekhs  to  arrive  at  poHtical  freedom  as 
directed  against  themselves.  On  their  side  the  Chekhs  elected 
those  among  their  fellow-citizens  who  had  taken  the  largest  part 
in  the  national  movement.  They  reached  Vienna,  determined 
to  claim  constitutional  liberty,  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the 
empire,  which  was  threatened  alike  by  Germans  and  Hun- 
garians, and  to  obtain  the  widest  powers  of  self-government 
possible  for  their  native  land.  The  Germans  of  Bohemia,  on 
the  contrary,  turned  their  eyes  towards  Frankfort,  and  would 
have  willingly  given  up  one  half  the  kingdom  to  the  Hungarians 
if  by  so  doing  they  could  have  secured  a  dominant  position  in 
the  other. 

Galicia  and  Italy. 

Galicia  had  not  remained  unaffected  by  the  revolution  in 
March.     The  Poles  of  Lwdw  (Lemberg)  had  quite  early  sent 
in   their  demands  to  government.     They  did  not  ask  to  be 
separated  from  Austria  ;  they  were  willing  to  remain  united  to 
the  monarchy ;  but  they  asked  that  unpopular  officials  should 
be  dismissed,  that  the  secret  police  should  be  suppressed,  that 
the  administration  should  be  carried  on  by  natives,  and  that 
the  Polish  regiments  should  not  be  required  to  leave  Galicia. 
The  Galician  nobles  dared  do  nothing,  restrained  as  they  were 
by  their  fears  both  of  Russia  and  of  the  peasants.     But  the 
minds  of  the  people  were  excited  by  political  refugees  who  had 
returned  to  the  country  ;  a  kind  of  provisional  government  was 
formed  in  Cracow,  and  on  the  26th  of  April  an  insurrection 
broke  out,  to  be  quickly  put  down  by  a  bombardment.     A  (ew 
days  before,  Stadion,  who  was  the  governor,  had  proclaimed 
the  final  suppression  of  all  forced  labour,  and  had  thus  deprived 
the  nobles  of  the  credit  of  a  measure  which  they  had,  however, 
had  the  good  sense  to  propose  ;  and  by  granting  the  wishes  of 
the  Ruthenians,  who  had  demanded  that  their  nation  should 


532  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

be  put  upon  an  equality  with  the  PoHsh  nation  and  the  clergy  of 
the  Uniate  Greek  Church  made  equal  to  those  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  he  cleverly  put  a  stop  to  the  complaints  of  the  Poles, 
and  made  the  Austrian  government  take  up  the  position  of 
arbitrator,  a  position  which  doubled  both  its  moral  and 
material  power  in  the  old  Polish  province.  From  this  time 
Galicia  gave  Austria  no  more  trouble. 

Before  passing  on  to  Hungary,  let  us  briefly  recall  the  events 
which  had  taken  place  in  Italy.  Milan  had  risen  on  the  1 9th 
of  March  ;  it  had  been  abandoned  by  Radetzky  on  the  22nd. 
The  Austrians  had  been  also  driven  out  of  Venice,  Brescia,  and 
Bergamo.  On  the  6th  of  April,  Charles  Albert,  king  of  Pied- 
mont, had  declared  war  on  Ferdinand  IV.  After  an  able  cam- 
paign, Radetsky  had  reoccupied  Lombardy  (August  3-10). 
"Austria  is  to  be  found  in  thy  camp  alone,"  said  the  Viennese 
poet  Grillparzer  to  Radetsky  in  his  celebrated  verses.  "We 
others  are  but  lonely  ruins."  A  long  series  of  wars  was  needed 
before  these  lonely  ruins  could  be  restored  to  that  condition 
of  apparent  union  in  which  for  more  than  half  a  century  they 
had  been  held  by  the  force  of  absolute  power. 


CHAPTER   XXXI. 

THE    HUNGARIAN    REVOLUTION. 

The  First  Hungarian  Ministry — The  i^th  of  March — The 
Croats  and  Servians. 

As  early  as  the  3rd  of  March  Kossuth  had  persuaded  the 
chamber  of  deputies  at  Pozsony  (Pressburg)  to  vote  an  address 
demanding  the  appointment  of  a  responsible  ministry.  The 
upper  chamber  was  more  timid,  and  had  refused  to  join  in 
this  vote;  but  the  news  of  the  disturbances  in  Vienna 
emboldened  men's  minds,  and  on  the  15th  the  address  was 
sent  up  to  Vienna.  In  it  a  whole  series  of  radical  measures 
were  proposed — the  reform  of  public  education,  religious 
equality,  trial  by  jury,  the  liberty  of  the  press,  annual  con- 
vocation of  the  diet,  union  of  Transylvania  with  Hungary, 
participation  of  the  nobles  in  the  taxes,  and  the  abolition 
of  forced  labour  and  of  all  other  feudal  dues  on  payment 
of  compensation  by  government  to  those  who  would  suffer 
from  this  law.  But  whilst  these  resolutions  were  being  passed 
at  Pozsony  an  event  took  place  at  Pesth  which  may  be  con- 
sidered the  first  symptom  of  the  Hungarian  revolution.  A 
number  of  young  men,  among  whom  were  the  well-known 
poet  Petofi,  the  novelist  Jokai,  and  Vasvary  the  stormy  and 
popular  speaker,  got  possession  of  a  printing-press,  and,  in 
defiance  of  the  censorship  of  the  press,  had  the  famous  pro- 
gramme of  the  15th  of  March  printed.  This  programme  was 
divided  into  twelve  sections,  and  demanded  the  greater  number 


534  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  those  liberal  measures  which  had  just  been  voted  at  Pozsony  ; 
but  besides  these  it  also  asked  that  the  diet  should  meet 
annually  at  Pesth,  that  the  ministers  should  reside  in  that 
town,  that  a  national  guard  and  an  Hungarian  bank  should 
be  established,  and  that  all  political  prisoners  should  be  set 
at  liberty.  The  emperor-king  yielded  to  the  demand  of  the 
diet,  and  the  palatine  called  upon  count  Bathyany  to  form 
the  first  Hungarian  ministry.  He  made  Kossuth  minister  of 
finance,  Eotvos  minister  of  public  education,  Szechenyi  of 
public  works,  and  Deak  of  justice.  At  the  same  time  the  diet 
passed  a  new  electoral  law  on  the  base  of  a  limited  suffrage, 
the  number  of  the  electors  being  raised  to  one  million  two 
hundred  thousand. 

Up  to  this  time  nothing  had  occurred  which  seemed  to 
show  any  wish  on  the  part  of  the  Hungarians  to  break  with  the 
government.  When  Ferdinand  came  to  close  the  sitting  of 
parliament  on  the  i6th  of  April,  he  was  enthusiastically 
received.  But,  unfortunately,  although  the  majority  of  the 
Magyars  were  content  with  the  dynasty,  the  non-Magyar  races 
were  far  from  being  satisfied  with  their  position.  The  Croats 
and  Servians  were  greatly  irritated  by  the  laws  concerning  the 
Hungarian  language;  and  the  Servians  also  demanded  that  they 
should  be  released  from  the  inferior  position  in  which  they 
had  hitherto  been  kept.  As  early  as  the  8th  of  April  they  had 
sent  a  deputation  to  the  diet,  where  they  had  in  vain  claimed 
their  recognition  as  a  nation,  and  the  right  of  being  admitted  to 
public  employment,  and  to  hold  synods  or  national  congresses. 

There  was  the  same  excitement  at  Zagreb  (Agram)  as  at 
Pesth.  The  diet  there  had  drawn  up  a  programme  giving  the 
peoole  so  much  self-government  that  only  the  army,  finance, 
and  foreign  affairs  were  left  in  the  hands  of  the  central  govern- 
ment. It  demanded  that  Croat  troops  only  should  be 
quartered  in  the  country,  and  that  an  archbishopric  and  a 
supreme  court  should  be  granted  to  Croatia.  It  consented 
to  send  deputies  to  the  two  chambers  of  the  Hungarian  diet, 
but  stipulated  that  the  laws  voted  at  Pesth  should  only  become 


JELACIC.  535 

binding  upon  Croatia  after  they  had  been  ratified  by  the  diet 
at  Zagreb. 

Jelacic,  the  new  ban,  was  devoted  both  to  the  Slav  cause 
and  to  the  dynasty,  and  immediately  after  his  installation  he 
had  declared  his  intention  of  defending  the  Croat  nationality 
energetically.  As  regarded  Hungary,  Croatia  already  posessed 
an  ancient  organization  more  or  less  definitely  defined,  and  the 
Servians  now  set  to  work  to  form  one.  In  an  assembly  which 
was  held  at  Karlovci  (Karlowitz)  on  the  13th  of  May,  they  voted 
the  re-establishment  of  the  offices  of  patriarch  and  voievode, 
the  formation  of  the  Servians  into  an  independent  nation,  and 
their  union  with  Croatia.  On  hearing  of  these  measures,  the 
Hungarian  ministry  collected  troops  against  those  whom  they 
looked  upon  as  rebels,  and  dismissed  Jelacic,  though  he  had 
had  nothing  to  do  with  these  measures. 

On  the  30th  of  May,  the  diet  of  Transylvania  met  at 
Kolosvar  (Klausenburg)  and  voted  the  uuion  of  that 
principality  with  Hungary  ;  but  even  here  an  unrecognized 
race  was  about  to  claim  its  rights.  Hitherto  the  fate  of  the 
principality  had  been  decided  by  the  Magyars,  the  Szeklers,  and 
the  Saxons ;  but  now  the  long-oppressed  Roumanians  raised 
their  voices,  and  in  a  large  assembly  held  at  Blasin  (Blasen- 
dorf,  Balasfalva),  they  also  drew  up  a  list  of  their  demands. 
These  included  their  recognition  as  a  race,  religious  equality, 
the  suppression  of  all  offensive  expressions  against  the 
Roumanians  contained  in  the  Hungarian  laws,  and  the 
adjournment  of  the  vote  of  union  with  Hungary  until  they 
should  be  represented  in  the  diet.  But  the  Magyars 
refused  to  listen  to  these  just  demands,  and  they  were  harshly 
rejected. 

Jelacic. 

The  Servians  were  the  first  to  begin  the  struggle.  After 
coming  to  an  understanding  with  Jelacic,  they  seized  the 
arsenal  at  Titel  and  established  a  camp  at  Karlovci.  They 
were   commanded    by    Stratimirovic,    an   improvised   general, 


536  HISTORY  OF  AUSTKO-HUNGARY. 

who  showed  remarkable  abUity.  In  his  manifesto  he  said, 
"  We  fight  against  those  who  violate  the  laws,  who  would 
keep  liberty  for  themselves  alone,  and  who  use  for  the  good 
of  the  Magyar  minority  the  treasure  which  has  been  amassed 
by  the  labour  of  Slavs,  Germans,  and  Roumanians."  The 
soldiers  on  the  military  frontier  made  common  cause  with 
their  fellow-countrymen,  and  a  large  number  of  volunteers 
joined  them  from  Servia.  The  court,  which  had  taken  refuge 
at  Innsbruck,  entered  into  secret  negociations  with  Jelacic, 
and  took  care  not  to  interfere  in  a  movement  which  enabled 
them  once  more  to  act  on  the  old  principle  of  the  monarchy, 
"  Divide  et  itupera^ 

The  Hungarian  diet  which  met  at  Pesth  on  the  5th  of 
June,  met  therefore  under  gloomy  auspices.  On  the  nth  of 
July,  Kossuth  made  a  remarkable  speech,  in  which  he  pointed 
out  the  danger  to  Hungary  from  the  southern  Slavs,  and 
asked  for  a  levy  of  men  and  a  loan  of  forty-two  million 
florins.  Conferences  between  the  Hungarians  and  Croatians 
were  opened  at  Vienna,  but  they  came  to  nothing.  "  We 
shall  meet  again  on  the  banks  of  the  Drave,"  said  the  president 
of  the  Hungarian  ministry  to  the  ban.  "  No,"  replied  Jelacic  ; 
"  I  will  come  to  seek  you  on  the  Danube."  He  crossed  the 
Drave  on  the  9th  of  September. 

On  his  side  Stratimirovic  had  collected  thirty  thousand 
men  and  one  hundred  cannons.  On  the  19th  of  September, 
the  Magyars  sent  a  deputation  to  the  parliament  at  Vienna  ; 
but  the  Slavs  predominated  there,  and,  irritated  past  en- 
durance by  the  injustice  of  the  Hungarians,  they  persuaded 
that  assembly  to  refuse  to  receive  it.  The  palatine, 
divided  between  the  duties  imposed  upon  him  by  his  office 
and  his  position  as  a  prince  of  the  imperial  family,  quitted 
Pesth,  pretending  that  he  was  going  to  place  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  national  army.  Instead,  he  journeyed  to  Lake 
Balaton  (Plattensee),  where  he  demanded  an  interview  with 
Jelacic,  which  was  refused.  He  then  left  Hungary  to  its  fate 
and  retired  from  office.     Louis  Bathyany  also   resigned,  and 


WA/?  BETWEEN  AUSTRIA   AND  HUNGARY.        537 

a  committee  of  safety,  presided  over  by  Kossuth,  was  appointed 
by  the  diet  on  the  25th  of  September.  But  now  the  Rou- 
manians and  Slovaks  took  up  arms.  An  imperial  decree, 
dated  September  25,  appointed  general  count  Lamberg  com- 
missary-royal and  commander  of  the  military  forces  of  Hun- 
gary, only  to  be  murdered  by  the  angry  people  the  day  after 
his  arrival  at  Buda.  The  emperor  replied  to  this  act  of 
rebellion  by  nominating  Jelacic  commissary-plenipotentiary 
of  Hungary  and  commander  of  all  the  forces  of  the  kingdom. 
The  rupture  between  Hungary  and  the  sovereign  was  now 
complete. 

The  War. 

The  Magyars  began  to  make  preparations  for  the  defence 
of  their  country.  Kossuth,  who  had  become  head  of  the 
ministry  on  the  resignation  of  Bathyany,  summoned  the  people 
to  act  as  volunteers  and  recalled  all  the  national  troops  who 
were  in  garrison  in  Bohemia  and  Galicia.  Jelacic  marched 
against  Pesth,  but  he  was  repulsed  and  fell  back  upon  Vienna, 
to  which  city  the  emperor  had  returned  on  the  12  th  of  August. 
The  diet  which  was  being  held  there  took  the  part  of  the 
dynasty  against  the  Hungarians,  but  the  Viennese  people,  out 
of  hatred  to  the  Slavs  and  from  their  own  revolutionary 
instincts,  professed  passionate  sympathy  with  the  Magyars. 
On  the  7th  of  October,  they  rose  against  the  government  to 
prevent  the  sending  of  reinforcements  to  Jelacic,  and  called 
on  the  Hungarians  to  come  to  their  assistance.  They  came, 
but  too  late,  and  were  forced  to  recross  the  Leitha,  while  the 
capital  had  to  open  its  gates  to  prince  Windischgratz.  We 
shall  return  later  on  to  this  bloody  episode  of  the  revolution. 
Oddly  enough,  the  Hungarian  ministers  who  thus  attacked  the 
troops  of  the  emperor  they  hated,  asserted  that  they  remained 
true  "  to  the  beloved  king  of  Hungary."  But  suddenly  there 
was  no  such  king,  as  on  the  2nd  of  December  Ferdinand  ab- 
dicated in  favour  of  his  nephew  Francis  Joseph.  The  Mag}'ars 
declared  that  they  could  not  recognize  this  abdication,  and 


538  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

while  they  were  in  revolt  against  the  king  who  governed, 
professed  to  preserve  a  platonic  fidelity  to  the  king  who 
governed  no  longer.  Kossuth  put  the  kingdom  in  a  state 
of  defence,  organized  the  famous  battalions  of  the  Honveds, 
or  "  defenders  of  their  country,"  and  raised  some  foreign  regi- 
ments in  which  there  were  many  Poles.  At  first,  Gorgey, 
Meszaros,  Perczel,  and  Kis  were  the  principal  generals.  A 
terrible  struggle  began.  Austria  attacked  Hungary  by  way  of 
Galicia,  Moravia,  Croatia,  and  the  Banat,  while  the  Roumanians 
in  Transylvania  seconded  the  imperial  troops  energetically, 
less  out  of  love  to  the  emperor  than  out  of  hatred  to  their 
old  oppressors.  In  such  an  unequal  fight  it  was  quite  certain 
Hungary  must  be  beaten.  Kis  was  obliged  to  abandon  ■ 
the  Servian  voievodina  and  to  fall  back  on  the  Maros ; 
Windischgratz  entered  Pozsony  on  the  i8th  and  Gyor  on 
the  27th  of  December;  Meszaros  was  beaten  at  Kaschau 
(Kasso);  Perczel  had  to  retire  before  Jelacic.  On  the  ist 
of  January,  1849,  the  committee  of  defence  which  had  been 
organized  by  Kossuth  left  Pesth  and  retired  to  Debreczen, 
a  marshy  district  which  was  almost  impregnable.  A  few  days 
later  the  Hungarian  troops  quitted  Pesth,  and  it  was  imme- 
diately occupied  by  Windischgratz.  Bathyany  was  arrested, 
courts-martial  established,  and  terror  reigned  in  the  wretched 
capital. 

Unfortunately,  union  was  very  far  from  reigning  between 
Kossuth  and  general  Gorgey.  This  officer  was  a  German  by 
birth,  and  may  have  embraced  the  Magyar  cause  rather  from 
motives  of  ambition  than  from  any  feeling  of  patriotism.  He 
pretended  to  recognize  no  orders  except  those  issued  by  the 
minister  of  war  who  had  been  appointed  by  the  king,  and 
played  the  absurd  part  of  a  man  who,  believing  the  sovereign 
to  be  deceived  by  a  wretched  set  of  advisers,  fought  against  his 
soldiers  while  all  the  time  pretending  to  obey  him.  A  Polish 
emigrant,  named  Dembinski,  had  received  the  supreme  com- 
mand, but  owing  mainly  to  the  disobedience  of  Gorgey  he 
failed  to  recapture  Pesth.     Then  Gorgey  again  became  gem- 


RUSSIAN  INTERVENTION.  539 

ralissimo  and  defeated  the  Austrians  at  GodoUo  on  the  6th  of 
April,  1849. 

During  this  time,  Bern,  a  Pole,  who  had  formerly  commanded 
at  Vienna  when  it  was  in  revolt,  carried  on  a  marvellous  cam- 
paign in  Transylvania.  It  was  in  this  that  the  poet  Petofi, 
still  quite  a  young  man,  perished.  For  a  long  time  his  country- 
men refused  to  believe  in  Petofi's  death,  and  even  quite  lately 
Hungary  has  been  stirred  by  a  report  that  he  was  kept  prisoner 
in  Siberia  by  the  Russians,  and  that  after  a  captivity  of  thirty 
years  he  was  about  to  return  to  his  native  land.  A  Russian 
army  interfered  to  prevent  Bem  from  occupying  Nagy-Szeben 
(Hermannstadt),  but,  in  spite  of  it,  that  town  fell,  and  the 
Russians  had  to  beat  a  retreat.  Perczel  in  the  meantime  re- 
conquered part  of  the  Servian  territory. 

The  Russian  Interoention. 

Fortune  seemed  to  smile  once  more  on  the  Hungarians. 
VVindischgratz  had  been  dismissed,  and  Kossuth  believed  him- 
self strong  enough  to  strike  a  decisive  blow.  On  the  14th  of 
April,  the  diet  of  Debreczen  voted  the  deposition  of  the  house 
of  Austria  and  the  independence  of  Hungary,  the  form  of 
government  being  reserved  for  future  decision.  Hungary  was 
far  too  aristocratic  a  country  and  too  much  imbued  in  monar- 
chical opinions  for  any  one  to  dream  of  proclaiming  a  republic. 
Kossuth  was  created  president,  and  proceeded  to  form  a 
ministry ;  count  Bathyany  was  to  be  minister  of  foreign  affairs, 
Gorgey  minister  of  war.  But  in  the  whole  of  Europe  there  was 
only  one  power  which  was  willing  to  recognize  the  new  Hungarian 
government,  and  that  was  the  short-lived  republic  of  Venice. 
Hungary,  which  had  seemed  up  to  this  time  firmly  attached  to 
all  the  forms  of  law,  now  finally  broke  through  its  old  traditions. 
The  declaration  of  independence  was  followed  by  a  great  suc- 
cess, the  capture  of  the  fortress  of  Buda  from  the  Austrians 
on  the  2ist  of  May.  About  three  weeks  before  this  event  the 
Official  Gazette  of  Vienna  had  announced  that  in  consequence 
of  the  solicitations  of  the  emperor  Francis  Joseph,  the  czar 


540  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

M'icholas  had  placed  the  Russian  army  at  his  disposal,  in  order 
to  crush  his  revolted  subjects.  This  was  an  avowal  of  Austrian 
weakness,  but  it  was  also,  as  has  been  well  remarked,  a  recog- 
nition of  Russia  as  the  natural  protector  of  the  Slavs  against 
their  Hungarian  oppressors.  It  was  in  vain  that  Ladislaus 
Teleki  in  Paris,  and  Julius  Andrassy  in  Turkey  tried  to  bring 
about  a  counter-intervention  in  favour  of  the  Magyars.  On 
the  4th  of  June,  the  Russians  reached  Pozsony.  Haynau,  who 
had  already  made  himself  notorious  in  Italy,  beat  the  Hungarian 
generals  on  the  Danube  and  then  marched  on  Pesth ;  one 
hundred  thousand  Russians  entered  Galicia,  commanded  by 
Paskievitch,  while  fifty  thousand  pushed  their  way  into  Tran- 
sylvania. Meantime  the  conduct  of  Gorgey  was  ambiguous, 
and  somewhat  resembled  that  of  the  French  general  in  com- 
mand after  the  battle  of  Metz,  in  1871;  he  pretended  to  be 
fighting  the  enemy,  while  all  the  while  he  meant  to  enter  into 
negociations  with  him  and  to  restore  the  monarchy.  Kossuth  was 
in  the  greatest  difficulties.  He  gave  the  supreme  command  to 
the  Pole  Bern,  and  the  equality  of  the  races  was  proclaimed  by 
the  diet  of  Debreczen  on  July  the  28th.  But  this  step  was 
taken  too  late  to  be  of  use,  and  on  August  the  nth  Kossuth 
surrendered  his  dictatorship  to  Gorgey,  and  on  the  day  follow- 
ing the  latter  capitulated  at  Vilagos,  and  gave  up  twenty-three 
thousand  men  and  one  hundred  and  thirty  cannons  to  the 
Russians.  Bem  and  Kossuth  took  refuge  in  Turkey ;  Kis 
surrendered  Petervarad  (Peterwardein)  on  the  27th  of  August; 
Klapka  defended  Komarom  (Comorn)  till  the  25th  of  Sep- 
tember, when  he  too  was  forced  to  surrender.  "  Hungary," 
wrote  Paskievitch  to  the  czar,  "  lies  at  the  feet  of  your 
majesty,"  for  the  last  rampart  of  Hungary  fell  with  Komarom. 
It  would  have  been  wise  and  fitting  to  have  celebrated 
with  clemency  a  victory  which  had,  in  truth,  been  gained  at 
the  cost  of  foreign  intervention,  but  this  was  far  from  being 
the  case  ;  the  vengeance  of  the  conqueror  was  pitiless.  Louis 
Bathyany,  the  first  president  of  the  first  Hungarian  ministry, 
was  shot  dead  at  Pesth ;  the  generals  who  had  given  them- 


HARSH  REVENGE   OF  AUSTRIA.  54 1 

selves  up  were  some  of  them  shot,  others  hanged  hke  male- 
factors, and  the  executions  that  followed  recalled  the  bloody 
days  of  Eperjes.  Thousands  of  patriots  were  condemned  to 
imprisonment  more  or  less  harsh,  and  among  them  were  women 
of  gentle  birth.  The  property  of  all  the  condemned  was  con- 
fiscated. Gorgey  alone  was  exempted  from  the  penalty  of 
death,  and  he  was  confined  in  Klagenfurt.  Those  who  had 
taken  refuge  in  Turkey  were  not  safe  from  persecution  even 
there,  for  Austria  and  Russia  demanded  their  extradition. 
The  sultan,  however,  refused  to  comply,  and  from  this  time 
may  be  dated  the  affection  of  the  Magyars  for  the  Turks,  an 
affection  which  was  increased  by  their  hatred  of  Russia  and 
of  everything  Slavonic.  It  was,  however,  agreed  that  the 
Hungarian  refugees  should  not  be  allowed  to  leave  Turkey  ; 
many  of  them  became  Mahommedans,  and  among  them  the 
Pole  Bem,  who  died  shortly  after  at  Aleppo.  Who  would 
have  imagined  at  that  time  that  the  count  Julius  Andrassy, 
who  was  then  hanged  in  effigy,  would  one  day  be  called  upon 
to  direct  the  fate  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  empire  ? 

A  fortnight  after  the  capitulation  of  Vilagos,  Venice  fell. 
King  Charles  Albert,  defeated  at  Novara  on  the  23rd  of  March, 
abdicated,  and  left  to  his  son  Victor  Emmanuel  a  kingdom  in 
difficulties ;  the  Austrians  returned  to  Florence,  and  absolutism 
was  restored.  Italy  and  Hungary  were  at  peace  because  they 
were  vanquished  ;  and  the  reaction  could  now  have  full  play 
till  the  time  when  it  should  have  either  worn  itself  out,  or  till 
events  should  occur  which  should  give  the  conquered  races  an 
opportunity  of  once  more  making  themselves  heard. 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

THE    REVOLUTION    IN    VIENNA. 

The  Parliamefit  of  Vietina — The  Days  of  October — Repression. 

We  must  now  speak  of  the  first  attempts  at  constitutional 
government  in  the  Austrian  countries  outside  Hungary.  The 
diet  at  Vienna  was  composed  of  one  hundred  and  eighty-three 
deputies,  of  whom  fifty-three  were  sent  by  Upper  and  Lower 
Austria,  forty-eight  by  Moravia,  ninety-one  by  Bohemia,  nine- 
teen by  Styria,  etc.  The  deputies  from  the  rural  districts 
formed  a  large  part  of  the  whole,  and  many  of  these,  especially 
among  the  Ruthenians  of  Galicia,  could  not  speak  German. 
The  Austrian  nobles  had  either  refused  to  stand  or  had  obtained 
no  votes,  and  the  Germans  were  consequently  in  a  minority. 
The  Radical  newspapers,  which  were  the  organs  of  the  German 
party,  spoke  of  the  coming  of  the  deputies  as  an  invasion  of 
the  barbarians,  and  denounced  them  with  terror;  some  of  these 
papers  were  even  printed  with  a  black  border.  The  Viennese 
went  so  far  as  to  ill-treat  the  Chekh  deputies,  who,  from  their 
intellectual  superiority,  were  the  leaders  of  the  Slav  majority, 
and  it  became  necessary  to  threaten  to  remove  the  parliament 
to  another  city  before  they  could  be  brought  to  reason.  On 
the  loth  of  July  the  members  met  in  the  imperial  riding-school, 
to  decide  upon  the  rules  which  were  to  guide  the  assembly. 
There  were  present  the  representatives  of  eight  different 
nationalities  :  Germans,  Chekhs,  Servian-Croats  for  Dalmatia, 
Slovenes,  Poles,  Ruthenians,  Italians  from   Istria,   and  Wal- 


REVOLUTION  IN  VIENNA.  543 

lachians  from  the  Bukovina.  The  first  question  which  pre- 
sented itself  was,  In  what  language  should  the  discussions  take 
place?  It  was  decided  that  interpreters  should  be  supplied  to 
those  who  could  not  understand  German ;  but  no  one  dared  to 
declare  German  the  official  language.  An  advocate  of  Vienna, 
Schmidt  by  name,  was  chosen  president,  Strohbach  a  Chekh, 
and  Smolka  a  Pole  being  the  vice-presidents.  At  first  it  was 
hardly  possible  to  divide  the  chamber  into  fixed  parties ;  their 
tendency  was  to  break  up  into  nationalities.  The  Chekhs, 
with  the  Ruthenians,  occupied  the  right ;  the  Tyrolese  and  the 
Austrian  Conservatives — the  Schwarzgelber,  as  they  were  called 
(black-and-yellows)— sat  in  the  centre,  while  on  the  left  was  the 
German  and  democratic  party.  The  session  was  opened  on 
the  22nd  of  July.  The  speech  from  the  throne  said  that  it  had 
been  convoked  "  to  finish  the  great  work  of  the  revival  of  the 
Fatherland  and  to  secure  freedom."  The  archduke  John  read 
the  speech  in  the  absence  of  the  emperor,  but  he  soon  after 
had  to  leave  for  Frankfort,  where  he  had  been  proclaimed  vicar 
of  the  empire.  The  assembly  then  begged  the  sovereign  to 
return,  and  he  came  back  to  Vienna  on  the  12th  of  August. 

The  chamber  lost  no  time  in  appointing  a  committee  to 
draw  up  a  new  constitution.  The  question  of  the  condition 
of  the  peasants  was  the  first  which  occupied  them,  and  the 
assembly  was  harassed  by  petitions  to  which  not  infrequently 
threats  were  added.  The  debates  over  this  grave  question 
were  all  the  longer  and  all  the  more  vehement  because  there 
were  so  many  peasants  present  among  the  members  of  the  diet. 
At  the  end  of  August  the  purchase  at  a  reasonable  price  of  the 
rights  of  the  lords  to  dues  and  forced  labour  was  voted,  and 
it  was  decided  by  224  votes  to  125  that  a  separate  indemnity 
fund  should  be  raised  in  each  province.  This  was  the  first 
step  towards  federation. 

Meantime,  while  the  parliament,  a  regular  Tower  of  Babel, 
carried  on  its  deliberations  with  a  wise  but  somewhat  grotesque 
slowness,  the  apostles  of  radicalism  and  of  an  universal  republic 
were  at  work  in  the  capital.     The  working-class  had  become 


544  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

excited,  and  the  Aula — as  the  students'  club  was  called — and 
the  artisans  exchanged  fraternal  greetings.  The  ministry  had 
been  paying  workmen  who  did,  however,  but  little  work,  at 
the  rate  of  fifteen  kreutzers  per  day,  on  the  same  system  as 
had  been  adopted  in  France  in  the  national  workshops ;  and 
a  reduction  of  wages  led  to  a  riot  which  had  to  be  put  down 
by  force.  The  committee  of  safety  which  had  been  established 
in  March  was  dissolved,  and  thereupon  the  populace,  which 
was  suffering  great  distress  from  want  of  work  and  was  irritated 
by  its  dissolution,  demanded  the  dismissal  of  the  ministers, 
Latour,  Schwarzer,  and  Alexander  Bach.  In  face  of  the 
growing  disturbance,  the  parliament  declared  itself  in  con- 
tinuous session,  but  it  could  not  even  succeed  in  maintaining 
order  within  its  own  walls,  as  the  re-establishment  of  the  com- 
mittee was  being  clamorously  demanded  by  the  Radicals.  A 
central  committee  of  all  the  Radical  associations  was  formed, 
and  popular  excitement  reached  its  height  when  the  Hungarian 
deputies  arrived  at  Vienna  to  plead  the  cause  of  their  country 
before  the  central  diet.  We  have  already  narrated  how  that 
body,  under  the  influence  of  the  Slav  majority,  refused  to 
receive  them  ;  but  the  democrats  of  Vienna  gave  the  Magyars 
an  ovation  and  promised  them  their  brotherly  assistance. 
They  kept  their  word,  and  early  in  October  succeeded  in 
preventing  the  departure  of  the  imperial  troops  which  were 
to  have  been  employed  against  Hungary.  But  it  was  only 
done  by  violence.  The  crowd  demolished  the  bridge  by 
which  the  troops  were  to  have  crossed  the  Danube,  and 
the  minister  of  war,  Latour,  was  attacked  and  taken  prisoner 
in  his  own  house,  and  after  being  brutally  ill-treated  was 
hanged  as  general  Lamberg  had  been  hanged  at  Pesth. 
Notwithstanding  the  heroic  efforts  of  some  of  its  members, 
the  diet  could  not  prevent  the  deeds  of  violence  which  dis- 
graced these  "  October  days."  It  formed  a  new  committee 
of  safety,  and  endeavoured  to  interfere  as  peace-maker  and 
arbitrator  between  the  government  and  the  Viennese  populace, 
and  in  an  address  to  the  emperor  it  proposed  that  a  popular 


CAPITULATION  OF   VIENNA.  545 

ministry  should  be  formed,  and  that  the  policy  towards 
Hungary  should  be  altered.  The  emperor  graciously  received 
the  deputation  at  Schonbrunn,  but  the  next  day  he  fled  to 
Olomouc  among  the  Slavs,  who  alone  seemed  to  him  safe 
from  the  spirit  of  revolution.  He  left  behind  him  a  mani- 
festo in  which  he  harshly  reproved  the  excesses  of  the  preceding 
days,  and  announced  that  he  was  about  to  take  measures  for 
the  deliverance  of  the  people  of  Vienna  and  the  maintenance 
of  liberty. 

Left  to  itself,  the  capital  could  not  hold  out  against  the 
three  armies  which  now  attacked  it  under  Auersperg,  Win- 
dischgratz,  and  Jelacic.  But  it  did  its  best,  and  Bern,  the 
Pole,  was  appointed  commander  of  the  place.  It  was  at  this 
time  that,  in  order  to  encourage  their  co-religionists  in  politics, 
the  republicans  of  Frankfort  sent  a  deputation  to  Vienna,  at 
the  head  of  which  was  Robert  Blum,  a  bookseller  of  Leipzig, 
who  was  one  of  the  leading  agitators  of  Germany.  After  the 
departure  of  the  emperor,  the  conservative  members  of  the 
diet,  with  the  Chekhs  at  their  head,  quitted  the  assembly 
and  retired  to  Prague,  whence  they  issued  a  protest  against 
all  the  later  disturbances  which  had  occurred  among  their 
colleagues  in  Vienna.  The  diet  was  now  nothing  more  than 
a  Rump  Parliament,  powerless  and  at  the  mercy  of  the  events 
of  the  hour.  But  the  capital  had  no  time  to  enjoy  its  triumph. 
It  was  attacked  by  Windischgratz  and  Jelacic  on  the  28th  of 
October,  and  capitulated  on  the  30th.  The  Hungarians 
arrived  too  late  to  be  of  any  use  to  their  allies,  and  were 
defeated  at  Schwechat  by  Jelacic,  and  forced  to  recross  the 
Leitha  in  disorder.  Windischgratz  entered  Vienna  and  pro- 
ceeded to  take  terrible  vengeance.  Messenhauser,  the  com- 
mandant of  the  national  guard,  was  shot,  and  Robert  Blum 
also  (November  10).  His  position  as  deputy  to  the  diet  at 
Frankfort  proved  no  protection  to  him ;  but  the  German 
parliament  protested  Avith  energy,  and  the  Austrian  minister, 
Schmerling,  was  forced  to  disavow  Windischgratz  at  the  very 
time  when  the   emperor   Nicholas  was    thanking  the  terrible 

2    N 


546  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

general  for  the  services  which  he  had  rendered  to  the  peace 
of  Europe.  Among  the  victims  we  have  still  to  name  Becker, 
chief  editor  of  The  Radical,  and  his  assistant  Jellinek.  The 
death  of  Latour  was  avenged. 

The  Diet  of  Kromerice — Abdication  of  Ferdinand  IV. 

The  emperor  did  not  wait  for  the  submission  of  the  capital 
before  summoning  the  diet  to  meet  him  in  a  spot  where  its 
deliberations  could  be  carried  on  in  needful  calm  and  security. 
A  rescript  dated  the  22nd  of  October  suspended  the  sittings 
of  the  assembly,  and  invited  it  to  meet  again  on  the  15  th  of 
November  in  the  Moravian  town  of  Kromerice  (Kremsier). 
In  this  little  town  it  might  hope  to  escape  from  all 
demagogic  influence.  Brno  had  been  first  proposed,  but 
it  contained  a  working  population  which  was  liable  to  be 
affected  by  the  excitement  in  Vienna,  and  Prague  was  hated 
by  the  Germans.  Smolka  the  Pole  was  now  elected  president, 
and  on  the  21st  of  November  a  new  cabinet  came  into  office. 
The  minister  Dobhloff  had  worn  himself  out  in  the  struggle 
against  the  Viennese  democracy,  and  the  new  leader  was 
prince  Felix  Schwarzenberg,  "  the  soldier-statesman,"  who 
had  learned  how  to  master  revolutions  in  a  long  career  in 
Italy.  He  had  served  first  at  St.  Petersburg,  then  in 
London,  Turin,  and  Naples,  and  had  proved  himself  the 
staunch  friend  of  absolutism  ;  he  had  also  held  an  important 
position  in  the  camp  of  Radetsky.  Count  Francis  Stadion, 
who  had  shown  great  powers  of  administration,  was  made 
minister  of  the  interior.  This  new  cabinet  without  a 
moment's  hesitation  decided  in  favour  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment, and  declared  that  Austria  should  remain  closely  united 
to  Germany  without  at  the  same  time  sacrificing  her  interests 
to  those  of  Germany.  They  announced  these  intentions  on 
the  27  th  of  November,  and  on  the  2nd  of  December  an 
extraordinary  meeting  of  the  diet  was  convoked,  at  which, 
to  the  great  surprise  of  the  meeting,  the  president  announced 
that  the  emperor  Ferdinand  had  abdicated,  that  his  brother, 


ABDICATION  OF  FERDINAND  IV.  547 

the  archduke  Francis  Charles,  renounced  all  right  to  the 
crown,  and  that  in  consequence  the  son  of  the  latter,  the 
young  prince  Francis  Joseph,  had  succeeded  to  the  imperial 
throne.  The  day  before,  which  had  been  his  eighteenth 
birthday,  the  young  prince  had  been  declared  of  age.  This 
grave  decision  had  been  arrived  at  in  a  family  gathering  at 
which  the  ministers,  the  privy  council,  Windischgratz,  and 
Jelacic  had  alone  been  present.  The  very  day  of  his  abdi- 
cation Ferdinand  left  for  Prague,  where  he  lived  in  retirement 
till  his  death.  For  a  long  time  his  feeble  health  had  not 
allowed  him  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  his  imperial  position,  and 
he  had  only  delayed  his  abdication  till  he  could  leave  his 
people  in  the  hands  of  his  nephew. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

FRANCIS    JOSEPH THE    REACTIONARY    PERIOD. 

The  New  Constitution  [Afarch  4,  1849). 

Francis  Joseph  began  his  reign  by  declaring  himself  a  con- 
stitutional monarch.  In  his  proclamation  at  his  accession  he 
said,  "  Firmly  resolved  to  preserve  the  splendour  of  the  crown 
without  a  blemish,  but  prepared  to  share  our  rights  with  the 
representatives  of  our  people,  we  hope,  by  the  help  of  God  and 
in  united  action  with  our  subjects,  to  be  able  to  make  all  the 
nations  and  all  the  races  of  the  empire  one  compact  state." 
This  announcement  seemed  to  point  to  a  determination  to 
make  of  Austro-Hungary  a  centralized  state.  As  soon  as  the 
constitution  of  the  monarchy,  or  rather,  to  speak  more  exactly, 
of  the  Polyglot  Polyarchy,  had  become  the  question  of  the  day, 
the  attention  of  statesmen  had  been  turned  to  three  different 
systems — centrahzation,  which  would  place  all  the  kingdoms  or 
provinces,  all  the  various  languages,  under  one  sole  government, 
either  parliamentary  or  absolute,  with  its  seat  at  Vienna;  dualism, 
which  would  leave  Hungary  its  old  constitution,  and  group  all 
the  other  States,  from  the  Gulf  of  Cattaro  to  the  frontiers 
of  Bukovina,  into  one  factitious  whole ;  and  federalism,  which 
would  endeavour  to  satisfy  both  the  national  aspirations  and 
the  old  rights  of  the  different  groups  of  which  the  Austrian 
empire  was  composed.  No  principle  had  up  to  that  time  been 
brought  forward  as  a  solution  of  the  problem.  Practically, 
dualism  had  already  come  into  existence,  since  Hungary  had 


DEMAND  FOR  FEDERATION.  549 

never  been  invited  to  send  deputies  to  the  deliberations  of  the 
assemblies  at  Vienna  and  Kromerice. 

The  Slavs  and  some  of  the  German  provinces,  among 
which  was  Tyrol,  demanded  a  federation,  as  they  knew  that 
this  system  alone  would  give  them  independence  and  the  self- 
government  which  they  so  much  desired.  The  Chekh  historian, 
Palacky,  was  asked  to  draw  up  a  scheme  which  should  contain 
the  expression  of  their  wishes.  According  to  it  there  were  to 
be  four  governmental  departments  for  those  interests  which 
were  common  to  the  whole  empire,  namely,  war,  marine, 
finance,  and  foreign  affairs,  and  in  all  other  matters  each 
province  was  to  enjoy  complete  autonomy.  The  various 
national  diets  were  to  choose  a  certain  number  of  deputies, 
who  were  together  to  constitute  the  central  diet.  Palacky 
counted  seven  nationalities  :  the  German,  Bohemian,  Polish, 
Italian,  Yougo-Slav,  Magyar,  and  Wallachian.  Each  of  them 
was  to  be  represented  in  Vienna  by  its  own  chancery.  When 
this  scheme  was  submitted  to  the  diet,  it  naturally  met  with 
much  opposition  from  the  German  advocates  of  centralization, 
who  wished  to  Germanize  the  empire,  and  it  was  evident  that 
there  would  be  many  difficulties  in  carrying  it  out.  One  of  the 
gravest  was  the  impossibility  of  disposing  of  Hungary  without 
the  help  of  her  representatives,  but  it  was  hoped  that  before 
long  the  emperor  would  summon  them  to  the  parliament,  and 
that  the  deputies  would  obey  the  summons.  Three  months 
passed  in  empty  discussion,  during  which  the  government  never 
interfered  in  the  debates  nor  gave. any  sign  of  its  intentions. 
The  task  before  parliament  was  not  that  which  had  been  before 
France  in  1789,  the  division  of  provinces  into  administrative 
divisions  subject  to  one  uniform  government ;  it  was,  on  the 
contrary,  to  restore  the  balance  between  countries  of  different 
races  and  histories,  and  to  create  a  new  Eastern  empire 
(Oesterreich)  on  the  banks  of  the  Elbe  and  the  Danube  on  the 
same  principles  which  had  secured  prosperity  to  Switzerland 
and  the  United  States  of  America.  A  delicate  task,  indeed, 
if  ever  there  were  one  !    But  at  any  rate  the  delegates  succeeded 


550  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARY. 

in  coming  to  an  agreement,  and  by  the  2nd  of  March  this  part 
of  their  work  of  making  a  constitution  seemed  to  be  finished. 

It  was  hoped  that  after  coming  to  an  understanding  with 
the  government,  it  would  be  possible  to  get  the  constitution 
finally  adopted,  and  that  on  the  15th  of  March,  the  anniversary 
of  the  revolution  of  1848,  it  could  be  solemnly  proclaimed. 
But  the  deputies  at  Kromerice  had  neglected  to  take  into 
account  the  influence  of  the  German  policy — that  fatal  element 
which  for  so  many  centuries  has  weighed  so  heavily  on  Austria. 
During  their  deliberations  Pillersdorf  had  allowed  members 
to  be  elected  for  the  German  parliament  at  Frankfort,  an 
Austrian  archduke  had  been  appointed  vicar  of  the  empire, 
and  Schmerling,  an  Austrian,  had  been  sent  to  represent  the 
empire  at  Frankfort.  This  parliament  of  Frankfort  looked 
upon  Austria  merely  as  an  annex  of  Germany,  whose  mission 
was  the  Germanizing  of  all  refractory  bodies,  and  the  putting  in 
practice  of  the  motto,  "  Drang  nach  GLsten  "  ("  Press  on  to  the 
East ").  Under  this  impression,  the  two  following  articles 
which  affected  Austria  had  been  voted  at  Frankfort  :  No  part 
of  the  German  empire  can  be  joined  with  any  non-German 
country  in  a  single  state  ;  if  a  German  country  has  the  same 
sovereign  as  a  non-German  country,  all  relations  between  the 
two  countries  can  only  be  regulated  according  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  a  purely  personal  union.  This  meant  that  Germany 
claimed  the  right  to  interfere  in  the  relations  of  Bohemia,  a 
German,  or  so-called  German  country,  with  Hungary.  "  When 
Austria  and  Germany,"  said  a  manifesto  published  on  the 
27th  of  November,  "with  renewed  vigour  shall  each  have 
decided  on  some  new  and  definite  form,  then,  and  not  till 
then,  can  the  nature  of  their  political  relations  be  settled." 
The  Federalists,  and  especially  the  Slavs,  had  accepted  this 
declaration  as  a  promise  of  emancipation  from  the  yoke 
of  Germany.  The  leaders  of  the  party  of  Greater  Germany 
had  replied  (January  14,  1849)  by  excluding  Austria  from  the 
Germanic  union  ;  but  this  did  not  suit  the  Austrian  cabinet, 
which  persisted  in  considering  Austria  as  the  first  of  the  great 


THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION.  55  I 

German  powers.  A  parliamentary  coup  d'etat  was  decided 
upon.  On  the  6th  of  March,  Stadion  assembled  some  of  the 
deputies,  and  told  them  that  in  the  absence  of  the  Hungarians 
the  assembly  could  not  legally  vote  a  constitution  which  could 
be  appUed  to  the  whole  empire.  In  vain  the  deputies  protested ; 
the  diet  was  dissolved,  and  the  so-called  constitution  of  March 
4  was  granted  to  the  people  by  imperial  decree.  This  was 
hardly  more  than  a  copy  of  those  of  Belgium  and  Berlin,  and 
the  Griindrechte  of  Germany.  It  declared  the  Austrian  empire 
to  be  independent,  indivisible,  and  indissoluble;  proclaimed  the 
equality  of  all  the  nations  whose  diets  now  became  simply 
provincial  councils  ;  two  chambers  were  to  assist  the  monarch, 
and  he  announced  his  intention  of  having  himself  crowned 
emperor  of  Austria.  The  Hungarian  constitution  was  to  be 
maintained  only  so  far  as  it  did  not  conflict  with  the  authority 
of  the  empire.  A  special  statute  was  to  settle  the  position 
of  the  Lombardo-Venetian  kingdom.  The  censure  of  the 
press  was  abolished  and  free  exercise  of  domestic  religion 
authorized.  Of  the  old  rights  of  the  various  provinces  and 
of  their  equality  not  one  word  was  said. 

Towards  the  end  of  185 1  a  circular  issued  by  Schwarzen- 
berg  said,  "  The  constitution  granted  on  the  4th  of  March  was 
only  meant  for  a  foundation  on  which  to  build  up  the  authority 
of  the  throne.  There  was  no  time  then  to  study  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  a  constitution  ;  we  took  those  of  foreign 
nations  as  our  models.  Such  a  law  could  have  no  result,  and 
it  has  had  none."  It  was  never  indeed  put  into  serious 
practice.* 

*  "  Free  institutions  are  next  to  impossible  in  a  country  made  up  of 
different  nationalities,  .  .  .  the  united  public  opinion  necessary  to  the 
working  of  representative  government  cannot  exist.  The  influences  which 
form  opinions  and  decide  political  acts  are  different  in  the  dift'erent  sections 
of  the  country.  An  altogether  different  set  of  leaders  have  the  confidence 
of  one  part  of  the  country  and  of  another.  The  same  books,  newspapers, 
pamphlets,  speeches  do  not  reach  them.  One  section  does  not  know  what 
opinions  or  what  instigations  are  circulating  in  another.  The  same 
incidents,  the  same  acts,  the  same  system  of  government  affect  them  in 
different  ways ;  and  each  fears  more  injury  to  itself  from  the  other 
nationalities  than  from   the  common  arbiter,  the  state.      Their   mutual 


552  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

But  though  it  was  powerless  and  useless  at  home  it  played 
an  important  part  in  the  relations  of  the  monarchy  with 
Germany.  The  parliament  of  Frankfort  offered  the  imperial 
crown  to  the  king  of  Prussia.  Thereupon  the  emperor  of 
Austria  declared  that  *'  he  was  sovereign  of  a  single  and  united 
state  ;  that  he  would  allow  the  interference  of  no  sovereign 
and  of  no  foreign  parliament  in  any  portion  of  his  dominions," 
and  thus  breaking  with  the  parliament  of  Frankfort,  he  recalled 
his  deputies  from  that  assembly,  which  very  soon  after  was 
dissolved.     Its  offer  had  meantime  been  refused  by  Prussia. 

The  Reactionary  Period  (1850-1860) — The  Coficordaf  {1S55). 

The  ten  years  which  followed  on  the  pacification  of 
Hungary  and  Northern  Italy  were  ten  years  of  pitiless  reaction. 
By  the  end  of  1849  order  was  restored  everywhere,  and  there 
was  no  reason  why  the  constitution  should  not  at  once  have 
been  put  in  practice.  An  imperial  decree  dated  the  4th  of 
August  had  said,  "It  shall  not  remain  a  dead  letter;  it  shall 
serve  as  a  rampart  to  liberty,  as  a  guarantee  of  the  power,  glory, 
and  unity  of  the  monarchy."  Stadion,  who  had  helped  to  draw 
it  up,  would  no  doubt  have  felt  bound  in  honour  to  put  it  in 
practice,  but  he  became  mad  in  May,  1849,  ^"^  ^^is  post  was 
filled  by  Alexander  Bach.  Bach  was  a  Viennese  advocate, 
who  had  been  formerly  remarkable  for  his  stormy  radicalism, 
but  as  soon  as  he  attained  power  he  became  the  strong  advocate 
of  absolutism  and  a  reactionary  policy,  and  of  all  the  gains  of 

antipathies  are  generally  much  stronger  than  jealousy  of  the  government. 
That  any  one  of  them  feels  aggrieved  by  the  policy  of  the  common  ruler  is 
sufficient  to  determine  another  to  support  that  policy." — ^John  Stuart  Mill, 
Essay  on  "  Representative  Government." 

During  the  height  of  the  reactionary  government  of  Metternich  and 
Francis  II.  the  German  pamphleteer,  Ludwig  Borne,  wrote,  "It  would  be 
a  double  misfortune  to  Europe  and  to  all  oppressed  nations  if  that  inert 
machine  should  one  day  be  forced  to  move  along  the  path  of  modern  con- 
stitutional government.  Up  to  this  time  Austria  has  been  looked  upon  as 
a  mouse-trap,  only  dangerous  to  those  who  allow  themselves  to  be  caught 
in  it.  He  who  is  free  and  outside  the  trap  can  easily  keep  away  from  it. 
But  w-oe  to  all  if  she  should  one  day  be  obliged  to  take  apart  in  the  Comedy 
of  Liberal  Ideas.' 


ABSOL  UTISM  RESTORED.  553 

the  revolution  he  only  preserved  the  laws  concerning  the 
condition  of  the  peasants  and  those  which  proclaimed  the 
equality  of  persons  and  estates  in  the  eyes  of  the  law.  The 
delusive  constitution  of  the  4th  of  March  was  suppressed  by 
letters  patent  (January  i,  1852);  the  various  provinces  of  the 
empire  were  divided  into  circles,  whose  heads  were  nominated 
by  the  central  government,  and  the  powers  of  the  diets  were 
reduced  to  a  minimum.  A  centralizing  bureaucracy  became 
the  willing  instrument  of  a  pitiless  Germanizing  policy,  which 
weighed  equally  heavily  on  the  Hungarians  who  had  wished  to 
dismember  the  empire,  and  on  the  Slavs  who  had  maintained 
its  integrity.  "  '  A  temporary  arrangement ' — such  was  the 
watchword  which  ruled  all  things  for  ten  whole  years,"  said 
Springer  ;  "  and  if  the  thing  had  been  possible  they  would  have 
made  a  temporary  arrangement  for  the  temporary  arrangement." 
"  Distrust  of  the  governed  became  a  state  maxim,"  said  another 
publicist,  "and  a  remedy  for  this  distrust  was  only  to  be  found 
in  material  force." 

The  blows  of  absolute  power  fell  first  on  Hungary,  and 
every  possible  means  were  taken  to  deprive  her  of  the  last 
vestige  of  self-government.  A  royal-lieutenancy  was  established 
at  Pesth,  and  the  kingdom  divided  into  five  circles  ;  government 
appointments  were  bestowed  in  preference  on  German  officials  ; 
the  German  language  was  used  in  all  public  offices,  courts  of 
justice,  and  schools  ;  and  the  people  were  under  the  strict  sur- 
veillance of  the  police.  A  state  of  siege  continued  down  to 
1854,  and  it  was  not  till  1857  that  a  general  amnesty  was 
proclaimed.  Transylvania,  which  had  been  lately  reunited  to 
the  mother-country,  was  again  separated  from  her  ;  the  Backa 
was  made  a  Servian  Voievodina,  and  the  Banat  a  separate 
province  ;  the  three  races  who  dwelt  in  these  districts — the 
Roumanians,  Germans,  and  Servians — were  to  be  allowed  to 
govern  themselves.  The  Servians  and  Roumanians  were 
Germanized  just  as  had  been  the  Magyars,  against  whom  they 
had  so  lately  been  fighting.  Croatia,  Slavonia,  and  the 
Hungarian  sea-board  had  formed  a  threefold  state  independent 


554  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

of  Hungary  ;  but  they  were  now  placed  under  the  Magyar 
yoke.     The  same  policy  was  followed  in  Bohemia  and  Galicia, 
especially  when  the  death  of  Schwarzenberg  in  1853  left  Bach 
more  powerful  than  ever.      "  Trial  by  jury  and  the  right  to 
public  trial  were  both  suppressed,"  says  Tomek,  "  the  election 
of  municipal  bodies  was  suspended,  and  the  equality  of  the 
German  and  Chekh  languages  in  the  schools  ceased ;  at  the 
same  time  the  police  acted  most  harshly  and  interfered  with 
the   power   of  the   ordinary   courts.       Thus,    in   1851,   Karel 
Havlicek,  who  was  accused  of  having  attacked  the  government 
in  some  satirical  writings,  was  confined  to  Brixen  in  Tyrol  by 
order  of  the  ministry,  after  he  had  been  acquitted  by  the  jury. 
The  liberty  of  the  press  so  far  as  concerned  political  matters 
was  completely  at  an  end,  and  not  a  single  newspaper  was 
allowed  to  be  published  in  Chekh.  .  .   .  The  Austrian  govern- 
ment was  solely  occupied  with  securing  Austrian  influence  in 
Germany,  and  hoped  to  please  the  Germans  by  maintaining 
the  supremacy  of  the  German  party  over  all  the  other  races  of 
the  empire.  ...  It  seemed  at  first  as  if  the  national  movement 
in  Bohemia,  which  had  begun  in  the  years  previous  to   1848, 
would   be  arrested  by  all  this    oppression.     It   did    produce 
a   kind   of  pause,    but   very    soon   the   spirit    of  the   people 
recovered  its  spring,  especially  among  the  rural  classes.     Freed 
from  their  old  state  of  subjection,  they  began  to  make  rapid 
progress,  both  moral  and  economical."     If  Bohemia — perhaps, 
with  Tyrol,  the  most  patriotic  of  all  the  Austrian  states — was 
treated  in  this  fashion,  it  is  easy  to  understand  what  was  the 
condition  of  the  Italian  possessions  and  of  Galicia. 

When  the  government  had  once  entered  on  its  career  of 
absolute  rule,  it  believed  that  its  own  power  could  only  be  in- 
creased by  adding  to  it  that  of  the  Church,  for  it  seemed  as  if 
the  pope  and  the  bishops  were  its  natural  allies.  At  a  meeting 
held  in  Vienna  in  1849,  the  Austrian  prelates  had  entered  an 
energetic  protest  against  all  national  movements.  They 
declared  that  "  they  were  a  remnant  of  Paganism ;  that 
difference  of  language  was  the  consequence  of  sin  and  the  fall 


THE   CONCORDAT.  555 

of  man."  The  government  decided  that  every  effort  should 
be  made  to  get  rid  of  the  last  trace  oijospehism,  and  after  long 
negociations  concluded  a  concordat  with  the  Holy  See  in  1855. 
This  concordat  declared  Roman  Catholic  worship  privileged, 
and  authorized  the  publication  of  all  pontifical  documents  with- 
out the  control  of  the  civil  power.  It  placed  both  public  and 
private  education  under  the  supreme  control  of  the  bishops, 
and  the  state  undertook  not  to  allow  the  circulation  of  any 
books  censured  by  them.  It  invested  them  with  the  power 
of  inflicting  punishment,  as,  for  instance,  of  imprisoning 
refractory  priests,  and  undertook  to  assist  them  in  carrying 
out  such  punishments.  These  examples  are  enough  to  show 
the  spirit  which  animated  the  clerical  policy.  Strangers  who 
visited  Austria  during  the  time  which  followed  on  the 
conclusion  of  the  celebrated  agreement  were  struck  with  the 
intellectual  torpor  of  the  country.  Added  to  all  this,  there 
was  great  misery  throughout  the  land,  as  the  events  of  1848- 
1849  had  exhausted  the  treasury.  By  the  end  of  1850  the 
government  owed  the  bank  of  Vienna  the  sum  of  231  millions 
of  florins,  by  185 1,  371  millions.  Loans  were  raised  year  after 
year. 

Ever  since  the  year  17  81,  the  Austrian  budget  had  always 
showed  a  deficit.  In  i8io,  this  had  amounted  to  215,502,220 
florins;  in  1855,  it  was  still  158,319,900  florins;  by  i860,  it 
had  been  reduced  to  65,662,810.  In  order  to  face  its  diffi- 
culties, Austria  had  been  obliged  to  issue  paper-money  subject 
to  a  discount,  and  bank-notes,  down  even  to  the  value  of 
twopence  halfpenny,  were  in  circulation. 

Austria  and  Germatiy — The  Crimean  War  (1854-1855). 

At  the  beginning  of  the  period  of  reaction,  the  misery  of 
her  people  at  home  had  not  prevented  Austria  from  presenting 
a  tolerable  appearance  abroad.  Schwarzenberg,  whom  popular 
opinion  persisted  in  considering  a  great  minister,  had  succeeded 
in  maintaining  the  federal  compact  with  Germany  which  gave 


556  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Austria  the  lead  among  the  German  states,  and  Prussia  was 
held  in  check  by  the  princes  whom  Francis  Joseph' had  cleverly 
grouped  around  him.  An  insurrection  in  Hesse  breaking  out 
about  this  time,  the  elector  implored  help  from  the  diet,  while 
his  subjects  appealed  for  assistance  to  Prussia.  The  emperor 
of  Austria  thereupon  arranged  a  meeting  at  Bregenz  with  the 
kings  of  Wurtemberg  and  Bavaria,  and  a  few  days  later  with  the 
emperor  Nicholas  at  Warsaw.  Just  at  this  moment  a  quarrel 
broke  out  between  some  Austrian  troops  who  were  in  occupa- 
tion of  Hanau  and  the  Prussians  who  occupied  Cassel,  and 
Austria,  collecting  a  formidable  army  on  the  frontiers  of  Hesse, 
summoned  the  Prussians  to  evacuate  the  province  within 
twenty-four  hours.  Prussia  was  obliged  to  yield,  Manteuffel 
coming  to  Olomouc  on  the  29th  of  November,  1850,  and 
submitting  to  the  demands  of  Schwarzenberg.  These  were 
that  Prussia  should  undertake  to  help  to  reinstate  the  elector, 
to  do  nothing  in  Holstein  without  the  help  of  Austria,  and 
to  take  part  in  the  conferences  which  had  been  opened  at 
Dresden  to  decide  on  the  future  organization  of  Germany. 
It  was  long  before  the  statesmen  of  Prussia  forgot  this  humili- 
ating conference  at  Olomouc.  It  seemed  as  if  Schwarzenberg 
might  now  begin  to  consider  himself  as  the  successor  of  Met- 
ternich  and  arbiter  of  the  fate  of  Europe. 

The  Dresden  conferences  ended  in  the  re-establishment 
of  the  old  confederation  with  its  central  organ,  the  diet  at 
Frankfort.  Austria  tried  in  vain  to  be  admitted  into  the 
confederation  with  all  her  Italian  and  Slav  provinces ;  could 
she  have  done  so  she  would  have  secured  the  guarantee  of 
Germany  for  these  possessions,  and  her  superiority  of  numbers 
over  Prussia.  But  Prussia  defeated  all  her  efforts,  and  herself 
renounced  any  claim  to  the  admission  of  the  duchy  of  Posen 
into  the  confederation,  in  order  to  prevent  that  of  Venice  or 
Galicia. 

When  Schwarzenberg  died,  the  emperor  did  away  with  the 
office  of  president  of  the  council  of  ministers,  but  the  same 
policy  was   continued   towards   Germany.     He   concluded   a 


CRIMEAN   WAR.  55/ 

treaty  between  Austria  and  the  Zollverein,  but  did  not  succeed 
in  getting  his  empire  incorporated  with  that  body.  In  1854, 
he  married  the  Bavarian  princess  Ehzabeth. 

The  Crimean  war  was  a  time  of  trial  to  Austria.  There 
was  no  doubt  that  she  owed  the  emperor  Nicholas  a  great  debt 
of  gratitude  for  his  services  during  the  Hungarian  revolution, 
a  debt  she  might  now  have  repaid.  "  Austria's  ingratitude  will 
astonish  the  world,"  said  Schwarzenberg ;  and  Count  Buol- 
Schauenstein,  who  had  succeeded  the  celebrated  diplomatist, 
set  himself  to  work  to  prove  the  truth  of  these  words. 

During  the  whole  of  our  century  Austria's  policy  as  regards 
the  Eastern  question  has  been  of  an  entirely  negative  character. 
All  her  energies  have  been  concentrated  on  Germany  and  Italy. 
In  the  Slav  or  Roumanian  countries  subject  to  the  Turks,  her 
interference  has  at  times  been  received  with  gratitude,  but 
she  could  never  interfere  effectually  in  behalf  of  the  Slavs  of  the 
Peninsula  as  long  as  she  tried  to  put  an  end  to  Slavism  within 
her  own  dominions.  Hence  her  action  has  been  undecided 
and  capricious.  Not  being  able  to  influence  Turkey,  she  has 
contented  herself  with  doing  all  she  can  to  destroy  the  influ- 
ence of  Russia,  and  to  support  the  Christians  under  Turkish 
bondage. 

At  first.  Count  Buol  proposed  a  conference  to  decide  the 
quarrel  between  Nicholas  and  the  Porte,  and  at  the  same  time 
undertook  that  Austria  should  remain  neutral  on  condition  that 
Russia  promised  to  respect  the  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  empire. 
Afterwards,  in  the  month  of  August,  he  demanded  that  the 
Danubian  provinces  should  be  placed  under  the  protection 
of  the  five  great  powers,  that  the  navigation  of  the  Danube 
should  be  completely  free,  that  the  treaty  of  1841  should  be 
revised  by  all  the  contracting  parties,  and  that  Russia  should 
renounce  the  protectorate  of  the  Christians  in  the  Ottoman 
empire. 

When  the  Crimean  war  began,  Austria  entered  into  an 
agreement  with  France  and  England  to  defend  the  Danubian 
provinces  against  Russia.     The  conferences  which  were  then 


558  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

held  at  Vienna  came  to  nothing,  though  by  them  Austria 
gained  time,  and  was  not  sorry  to  see  Russia  growing  weaker 
without  any  need  for  her  to  take  part  in  the  fight.  She  con- 
tented herself  with  occupying  the  Principalities  with  the  consent 
of  the  Porte.  One  unexpected  event,  however,  disturbed  her 
statesmen  seriously.  Piedmont,  which  they  knew  to  be 
governed  by  an  ambitious  and  intelligent  prince,  had  entered 
into  alliance  with  France  and  England,  and  had  sent  a  body 
of  troops  into  the  Crimea.  In  spite  of  the  terror  under  which 
Italy  lay  prostrate,  might  this  not  be  a  sign  of  some  awakening 
of  the  national  spirit  ?  It  was  high  time  to  try  to  put  an  end 
to  the  war.  Austria  renewed  the  propositions  she  had  made 
in  August,  and  demanded  that  part  of  Bessarabia  should  be 
abandoned  and  the  Black  Sea  declared  neutral.  She  even 
recalled  her  ambassador  from  St.  Petersburg.  Alexander 
agreed  to  make  peace,  and  on  the  30th  of  March,  1856, 
signed  the  treaty  of  Paris.  The  Black  Sea  was  to  remain 
neutral ;  the  navigation  of  the  Danube  was  to  be  free ;  Russia 
renounced  the  exclusive  protection  of  the  orthodox  Christians 
who  were  the  subjects  of  Turkey,  and  all  Eastern  questions 
were  to  be  submitted  to  European  arbitration.  But  an  incident 
occurred  at  the  congress  of  Paris  which  had  most  serious  results 
for  Austria.  Piedmont  was  represented  at  the  congress  by 
Cavour,  and  the  question  of  Italy  was  incidentally  brought 
forward.  The  abnormal  condition  of  the  peninsula,  and  the 
dangerous  preponderance  which  Austria  had  acquired,  were 
pointed  out  both  by  Cavour  and  Walewski.  The  ItaUan 
question  had  crept  into  the  congress  under  the  shadow  of  the 
Eastern  question,  a;id  once  brought  forward,  it  was  not  long 
before  it  received  the  solution  which  had  become  inevitable. 

The  War  in  Italy, — The  Loss  of  Lombardy  (1859). 

The  results  of  the  Crimean  war  were  not  on  the  whole 
favourable  to  Austria.  She  had  certainly  obtained  the  free 
navigation  of  the  Danube,  but  the  two  provinces  of  Wallachia 
and  Moldavia  had  united  to  form  one  state,  and  that  state  was 


WAJ?  IN  ITALY.  559 

sure  to  prove  a  fatal  attraction  to  the  Wallachians  of  Transyl- 
vania. The  friendship  of  Russia  had  grown  cold,  she  even 
accused  Austria  of  treason.  Piedmont  had  entered  into  the 
European  concert,  and,  sure  of  the  friendship  of  Napoleon, 
was  preparing  for  war.  War  was,  in  fact,  decided  on  in  July, 
1858,  at  a  meeting  between  Cavour  and  the  emperor  of  the 
French,  and  the  relations  between  France  and  Austria  became 
more  and  more  strained,  a  fact  which  was  announced  some- 
what brutally  by  Napoleon  at  the  ofificial  reception  of  the 
I  St  of  January,  1859.  The  alliance  between  France  and 
Piedmont  was  cemented  a  few  days  later  on  by  the  marriage 
of  Prince  Jerome  with  the  Princess  Clotilde,  daughter  of  Victor 
Emmanuel. 

Count  Cavour  next  obtained  the  help  of  Lord  Cowley,  the 
English  diplomatist,  and  through  him  demanded  from  Austria 
the  creation  of  a  national  government  for  Lombardy  and 
Venice,  the  abandonment  of  the  Romagna,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  constitutional  governments  at  Parma,  Modena,  and 
Florence.  On  this,  Russia  proposed  a  congress  such  as  Austria 
had  formerly  proposed  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean  war.  In 
reply,  Count  Buol  took  up  an  aggressive  attitude,  and  de- 
manded the  disarmament  of  Piedmont  (April  19),  a  demand 
which  was  followed  on  the  3rd  of  May  by  the  official  declara- 
tion of  war  against  Austria  by  France.  Events  quickly 
followed  one  another.  First  Leopold  IL,  duke  of  Tuscany, 
fled;  then  Francis  V.,  of  Modena,  carrying  with  him  his 
treasure  and  his  state-prisoners.  Radetsky,  the  victor  of 
Novara,  had  died  the  year  before,  and  his  successor,  General 
Giulay,  showed  none  of  his  predecessor's  ability ;  he  did  not 
know  how  to  invade  Piedmont  or  to  cut  the  road  between 
Turin  and  Genoa,  and  he  was  driven  back  into  Lombardy. 
Then  came  the  victories  of  Montebello,  Palestro,  Turbigo,  and 
Magenta,  and  Lombardy  was  in  the  hands  of  the  allies.  The 
Austrian  troops  were  forced  to  retire  behind  the  Mincio. 

The  battle  of  Solferino  (June  23)  was  a  terrible  blow  to 
the  Austrian  army,  but  Napoleon  IIL  was  ignorant  how  to 


56o  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

make  the  most  of  his  success.  He  had  declared  that  he 
wished  to  see  Italy  free  "  from  the  Alps  to  the  Adriatic,"  but 
he  shrank  from  the  completion  of  his  generous  task.  Germany 
had  taken  up  arms,  and  he  was  afraid  of  her ;  he  dared  not 
rouse  an  impatient  Hungary,  and  "seek  strength  from  the  aid 
of  revolution."  On  the  nth  of  July,  he  had  an  interview 
with  Francis  Joseph  at  Villafranca,  which  resulted  in  the 
termination  of  the  war  and  the  peace  of  Zurich  (November  lo, 
1859) — the  most  futile  peace  perhaps  that  has  ever  been 
signed.  By  it  the  emperor  of  Austria  abandoned  to  Napoleon 
III.,  that  is  to  say,  to  his  ally,  Victor  Emmanuel,  the  whole  of 
Lombardy,  with  the  exception  of  the  fortresses  of  Mantua  and 
Peschiera.  The  grand-dukes  of  Tuscany  and  Modena  were 
to  be  reinstated  in  their  dominions,  and  Italy  was  to  form  a 
confederation  of  which  Austria  by  right  of  the  possession  of 
Venetia  was  to  be  one  member.  But  these  were  but  fantastic 
dreams  which  were  to  fade  away  quickly  before  the  wily  and 
patient  policy  of  Cavour.  Austria  was  obstinately  determined 
on  keeping  Venetia,  rather  from  a  feeling  of  pride  than  from 
any  real  interest,  and  would  not  allow  Italy  to  obtain  possession 
of  it  by  the  payment  of  a  sum  of  money,  a  bargain  which  Italy 
would  willingly  have  made.  She  was  to  pay  dearly  enough  for 
her  obstinacy. 


CHAPTER   XXXIV. 

ATTEMPTS    AT   CONSTITUTIONAL   GOVERNMENT — WAR    WITH 
PRUSSIA    (1860-1866). 

Return  to  Constitutional  Government — Patents  19/1860  and  1 862. 

We  have  thus  seen  how  the  absolute  and  centralized  govern- 
ment of  Vienna  had  resulted  in  the  dismemberment  of  the 
empire,  and  even  in  the  partial  alienation  of  the  fidelity  of  her 
subjects,  some  among  whom  openly  rejoiced  over  her  misfor- 
tunes. It  has  been  said  that  some  of  the  Hungarian  or 
Slavonic  regiments  were  broken  up  in  order  that  they  could 
not  be  called  upon  to  fight,  and  that  the  Bohemian  peasants 
might  be  heard  saying,  "  If  we  are  beaten  we  shall  get  a 
constitution,  if  we  beat  we  shall  have  the  inquisition."  At 
last  the  emperor  began  to  understand  that  he  had  blundered, 
and  dismissed  Alexander  Bach,  the  minister  whose  name  is 
always  associated  with  this  time  of  disaster ;  and  then,  after 
some  hesitation,  he  introduced  certain  reforms  which  tended 
towards  the  gradual  introduction  of  constitutional  government 
in  his  dominions.  He  first  of  all  (March  6,  i860)  created  an 
enlarged  council  of  the  empire ;  that  is  to  say,  he  added  thirty- 
eight  members,  chosen  from  among  the  nobles,  and  repre- 
senting the  various  countries  of  his  empire,  to  the  usual 
council.  This  council  was  to  discuss  matters  of  finance  and 
legislation  ;  but  it  was  to  be  a  purely  consultative  body,  and  it 
was  given  no  power  of  initiation.  This  did  not  amount  to 
much  compared  with  the  claims  and  the  hopes  of  the  people, 

2  o 


562  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

but  in  the  end  their  influence  made  itself  felt.  Goluchowski, 
a  gentleman  of  Galicia,  who  consequently  did  not  share  in  the 
ill-feeling  subsisting  between  the  Germans  and  Magyars,  was 
chosen  one  of  the  ministers,  and  with  his  help  was  drawn  up 
the  charter  or  patent  of  the  20th  of  October.  The  following  is 
a  list  of  the  principal  measures  of  reform  which  it  contained  : 
For  the  future  the  sovereign  was  to  exercise  all  legislative 
power  only  with  the  help  of  the  diets,  or  of  the  council  of 
the  empire,  composed  of  delegates  from  the  diets ;  the 
Council  of  the  Empire  {Reichsrath)  was  to  enact  the  laws  con- 
cerning the  common  interests  of  all  the  countries — finance, 
trade,  means  of  communication,  and  war — all  other  matters 
being  left  to  the  decisions  of  the  separate  diets ;  all  men  were 
to  be  equal  in  the  sight  of  the  law  as  regarded  religion,  taxa- 
tion, and  military  service ;  the  number  of  the  members  of  the 
Reichsrath  was  to  be  raised  to  one  hundred  ;  there  was  no 
longer  to  be  either  a  minister  of  the  interior,  or  of  public 
worship,  or  of  justice ;  the  diets  were  to  retain  their  mediaeval 
organization  and  class  distinctions. 

Schmerling  was  the  minister  chosen  to  develop  and  carry 
out  the  principles  of  the  new  law,  which  he  completed  by  the 
patent  of  the  26th  of  February,  1861,  But,  like  Bach  and 
Metternich,  his  first  object  was  to  keep  up  the  influence  of 
the  German  element,  and  he  tried  to  apply  to  Austria  theories 
of  parliamentary  government  such  as  were  only  suitable  to 
homogeneous  states.  He  created  two  Chambers.  The  Upper 
Chamber  included  the  princes,  the  large  landowners,  the 
bishops,  and  some  eminent  men  chosen  by  the  sovereign. 
The  Chamber  of  Deputies  contained  more  than  three  hun- 
dred members,  who  were  elected  by  the  provincial  diets. 
Hungary  sent  eighty-five ;  Transylvania,  twenty  ;  Croatia  and 
Slavonia,  nine  ;  Dalmatia,  five  ;  Bohemia,  fifty-four ;  Moravia, 
twenty-two ;  Silesia,  six ;  Upper  and  Lower  Austria,  twenty- 
eight  ;  Salzburg,  three ;  Styria,  thirteen ;  Carinthia,  five ; 
Carniola,  six ;  Istria  and  Triest,  six ;  Galicia,  thirty-eight ; 
Bukovina,    five;    and    Tyrol    and    Vorarlberg,    twelve.      He 


SCHMERLING'S    WAR.  563 

restored  the  offices  of  the  ministers  of  the  interior,  public 
worship,  and  justice,  and  strengthened  the  authority  of  the 
central  parliament  at  the  expense  of  the  provincial  diets. 
The  hopes  which  had  been  raised  among  the  federalists  by 
the  patent  of  October,  i860,  soon  vanished  before  measures 
like  these;  even  the  government  could  not  expect  that  the 
Hungarians  would  consent  to  give  up  their  autonomy,  and 
to  discuss  the  interests  of  their  kingdom  with  Venetians,  Slo- 
venians, and  Poles.  Accordingly  it  was  agreed  that  their 
deputies  should  not  take  their  seats  except  when  the  common 
interests  of  the  whole  empire  were  concerned ;  their  presence 
constituted  a  Reichsrath  with  full  powers,  while  their  absence 
made  the  parliament  an  assembly  of  limited  powers,  in  which 
the  various  groups  busied  themselves  with  questions  which 
were  beyond  the  competency  of  the  several  diets.  In  this  way 
the  centralizing  minister  managed  to  get  rid  of  the  principle 
of  a  dual  government.  At  the  same  time  he  arranged  all 
the  provincial  diets  on  one  model,  and  cleverly  managed  the 
right  of  voting  in  such  a  way  as  to  stifle  the  Slav  majority 
under  the  German  minority.  His  law  substituted  the  repre- 
sentation of  interests  for  the  representation  of  countries.  He 
admitted  three  classes  of  electors  —  large  landowners,  the 
inhabitants  of  towns,  and  the  peasants.  He  granted  especial 
privileges  to  those  large  landed  estates  which  belonged  to 
the  nobility  who  were  vassals  of  the  sovereign,  and  to  the 
towns  where  the  German  settlers  were  especially  numerous. 
The  electoral  divisions  Avere  arranged  in  most  arbitrary 
fashion;  for  example,  in  Bohemia  the  Slav  towns  had  a 
deputy  for  every  12,020  electors,  while  the  German  towns 
had  one  for  every  10,315.  In  rural  districts  the  Slavs  had 
a  deputy  for  every  53,200  inhabitants,  while  the  Germans 
had  one  for  40,800.  The  German  town  of  Reichenberg, 
containing  19,000  people,  had  three  deputies,  while  the  Slav 
town  of  Prague,  with  150,000,  had  only  ten.  Some  of  the 
German  towns  were  indeed  nothing  but  rotten  boroughs. 
The  German  hamlet  of  Parchen,  containing  500  inhabitants, 


564  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

had  a  deputy;  the  Slav  town  of  Kladno  with  8000,  had  none. 
In  a  word,  the  whole  of  this  electoral  system  was  a  lie,  and 
ever  since  the  law  was  passed  the  non-German  inhabitants 
have  never  ceased  to  demand  its  revision.  But  it  is  still  in 
existence,  and,  although  it  has  been  modified,  so  long  as  it 
remains  Austria  cannot  be  looked  upon  as  a  state  possessing 
real  representative  government. 

Opposition  of  the  Nationalities  to  the  Centralizing  Reforins — 
In  stirred  ion  in  Poland  {i%6t,). 

When  the  constitution  of  February  had  become  law,  the 
various  nations  of  the  empire  had  to  make  up  their  minds 
if  they  would  accept  it  and  send  deputies  to  the  new 
Reichsrath.  Venetia,  Hungary,  Transylvania,  and  Croatia 
refused  to  do  so.  One  hundred  and  forty  deputies — more 
than  one-third  of  the  whole  number  of  three  hundred  and  forty- 
three — were  missing.  "  We  can  wait,"  said  M.  de  Schmerling 
proudly  ;  but  his  diplomacy  failed  to  make  any  impression  on 
Hungarian  obstinacy.  "  I  know  nothing  of  any  constitution 
except  the  Hungarian  constitution ;  I  can  only  treat  on  the 
basis  of  the  Hungarian  constitution,"  was  the  invariable 
answer  of  Deak  to  all  the  proposals  of  the  Viennese  states- 
men. The  Hungarian  diet  was  convoked  at  Pesth  in  the 
month  of  April,  1861,  but  it  refused  to  enter  into  any  com- 
promise, and  some  of  the  Magyar  lawyers  went  so  far  as  to 
assert  that  Francis  Joseph  was  not  king  of  Hungary,  as  he  had 
never  been  crowned.  In  a  country  whose  rights  are  historical 
the  coronation  is  not  merely  a  religious  ceremony,  but  a 
bilateral  contract.  In  it  the  king  takes  an  oath  that  he  will 
recognize  all  the  ancient  rights  of  the  kingdom.  Hence  the 
importance  attached  to  the  rite  of  coronation  by  the  Chekhs 
and  Magyars.  Those  legists  who  did  not  recognize  an  un- 
crowned king  wished  to  pass  a  resolution  only ;  but  Deak 
persuaded  them  to  vote  an  address.  It  was  a  document 
remarkable  for  its  lucidity  and  logic,  and  thus  stated  the 
historical  rights  of  the  kingdom  :  "  The  fundamental  condition 


INSURRECTION  IN  POLAND.    •  565 

of  our  political  life  and  of  our  national  independence  is  the  legal 
independence  and  self-government  of  our  land.  Our  first 
duty  is  to  consecrate  all  our  faculties  to  the  maintenance  of 
Hungary  as  Hungary,  and  to  secure  to  her  all  her  consti- 
tutional rights.  .  .  .  We  solemnly  declare  that  we  cannot 
sacrifice  any  of  our  rights  which  have  been  gained  by  treaty, 
law,  royal  letters,  or  by  the  coronation  oaths  for  any  con- 
sideration or  any  interest  whatsoever."  It  Avent  on  to  demand 
that  the  laws  of  1848  and  the  engagements  entered  into  by 
the  Pragmatic  Sanction  should  be  carried  out.  The  govern- 
ment at  Vienna,  however,  believing  itself  able  to  overcome 
Hungary  by  force,  dissolved  the  diet  on  the  22nd  of  August, 
and  forbade  the  comitat  assemblies,  substituting  royal  com- 
missioners for  the  refractory  Fo'ispanak.  But,  in  spite  of  all 
this,  the  resistance  of  the  Magyars  went  on  even  after 
Schmerling  had  succeeded  in  persuading  the  Transylvanians 
to  send  deputies  to  Vienna. 

Bohemia  was  hardly  more  satisfied  than  Hungary.  She 
rightly  complained  of  the  iniquitous  electoral  law  passed  by 
the  minister,  and  though  she  sent  deputies  to  the  Reichsrath, 
she  did  so  reserving  all  the  rights  of  the  kingdom,  and  after 
1863  her  deputies  ceased  to  take  any  part  in  its  deliberations. 

The  only  liberty  granted  by  Schmerling  was  the  liberty  of 
the  press,  and  the  Slavs  profited  but  little  by  it,  as  within 
the  space  of  three  years  the  owners  of  the  fourteen  Chekh 
newspapers  published  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia  were  con- 
demned to  sixty-one  months  of  imprisonment,  more  or  less 
harsh,  amongst  them,  and  fines  amounting  to  21,500  florins. 

The  insurrection  in  Russian  Poland  in  1863  caused  intense 
excitement  in  Galicia  and  serious  embarrassment  to  the 
cabinet  of  Vienna.  Whilst  Prussia  concluded  a  military 
convention  with  Russia  against  the  rebels,  Rechberg,  who 
was  then  Austrian  minister  of  foreign  affairs,  carried  on  a 
truly  Machiavelian  policy  towards  both  parties.  Napoleon  HI. 
sympathized  with  the  Poles,  and  counted  on  the  help  of 
Austria  to  enable  him  to  fight  Russia  and  Prussia.     He  was 


566  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

ready  to  help  the  cabinet  of  Vienna  to  recover  Silesia  and  to 
secure  the  Danubian  principalities  in  exchange  for  Venetia,  but 
these  projects  were  neither  liked  nor  understood  at  Vienna. 
The  government  of  the  emperor  Francis  Joseph  contented  itself 
with  addressing  diplomatic  notes  to  the  court  of  St.  Petersburg, 
and  finally  declared  Galicia  in  a  state  of  siege.  This  conduct 
succeeded  in  irritating  not  only  the  Poles,  but  the  races  akin 
to  them  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  who  were  more  inclined  to 
sympathize  with  a  Polish  revolution  than  with  the  Muscovite 
autocrat.  Who  can  say  what  might  not  have  been  the  fate  of 
Austria  if  at  this  time  she  had  renounced  once  for  all  her 
position  in  Germany  and  her  possession  of  Venetia,  and  had 
looked  for  compensation  on  the  side  of  Poland  ? 

It  soon  became  evident  that  Schmerling's  scheme  could 
not  be  worked,  and  in  1865  the  emperor  undertook  a  journey 
to  Pesth  in  order  to  try  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the 
Hungarians.  He  decided  on  dismissing  Schmerling,  and 
giving  them  a  new  chancellor.  The  advocates  of  a 
Germanizing  policy  were  in  despair,  but  the  delight  in  the 
provinces  was  great,  and  the  towns  of  Prague,  Pesth,  and 
Lwow  (Lemberg)  illuminated.  Francis  Joseph  declared  the 
suspension  of  the  February  constitution  and  the  adjournment 
of  the  Reichsrath  until  such  time  as  the  diets  of  Hungary  and 
Croatia  should  have  decided  on  the  form  which  their  con- 
nection with  the  empire  should  take.  Schmerling  was  replaced 
by  Belcredi,  who  was  a  Moravian,  and  cared  much  less  than 
his  predecessor  for  maintaining  the  supremacy  of  the  German 
nationality.  The  diets  of  the  larger  Slav  countries,  Bohemia 
and  Galicia,  were  grateful  for  the  change  of  minister,  and  at 
once  set  to  work  to  undo  the  Germanizing  measures  of  the 
previous  cabinet.  In  Galicia,  for  instance,  the  Polish  language 
was  introduced  into  all  the  schools.  The  diet  of  Hungary  was 
opened  on  the  14th  of  December,  1865,  when  the  extreme  left 
demanded  that  the  whole  of  the  laws  passed  in  1848  should  at 
once  be  put  into  execution.  The  liberal  party,  under  the 
leadership  of  Deak,  drew  up  a  programme  which  endeavoured 


tVAJi    WITH  PRUSSIA.  567 

to  reconcile  what  was  possible  at  the  time  with  the  continuity 
of  the  old  rights  of  Hungary.  To  do  this  it  was  first  needful 
to  restore  vigour  to  the  laws  of  1848,  and  then  to  nominate  a 
responsible  ministry  which  should  be  able  to  decide  on  the 
necessary  modifications.  The  debates  on  the  subject  lasted 
a  long  time,  and  were  finally  interrupted  by  the  war  which 
broke  out  between  Austria  and  Italy. 

Wdr  against  Pr^issia  and  Italy — Austria  excluded  from 
Germany — Loss  of  Venetia  (1866). 

Prussia  had  never  forgotten  her  humiliation  at  Olomouc  in 
1850.  She  was  longing  to  have  her  revenge,  and  to  place  her- 
self at  the  head  of  Germany.  It  must  be  allowed  that  such  a 
position  suits  her  much  better  than  her  rival,  for  with  the 
exception  of  the  duchy  of  Posen  and  some  parts  of  Silesia, 
the  Prussian  state  is  purely  German.  King  William,  who  had 
been  crowned  in  1861,  had  discovered  in  Count  Bismarck  a 
minister  whose  policy  was  to  place  Prussia  at  the  very  height 
of  power.  While  Prussia  and  Austria  were  busied  about  their 
rival  claims.  Count  Beust  set  to  work  to  organize  an  alliance 
by  means  of  which  the  smaller  kingdoms  were  to  maintain 
their  independence  against  the  two  great  empires. 

There  is  no  need  for  us  to  recount  here  all  the  attempts 
made  by  Austria  to  obtain  the  lead.  We  will  mention  only  one  ; 
her  proposal  to  draw  up  a  uniform  code  of  civil  law  for  the 
whole  of  Germany,  a  project  which  came  to  nothing.  In  the 
month  of  August,  1863,  the  emperor  Francis  Joseph  summoned 
all  the  German  princes  to  Frankfort  to  draw  up  a  plan  of 
federal  reform,  and  they  all,  with  the  exception  of  the  king  of 
Prussia,  who  refused  to  appear,  met  in  the  Romer  Hall. 
Francis  Joseph  then  endeavoured,  though  in  vain,  to  secure 
for  his  dynasty  the  perpetual  presidency  of  the  German  con- 
federation, and  to  obtain  the  guarantee  of  Germany  for  the 
security,  in  case  of  war,  of  all  his  possessions  which  were 
situated  outside  the  confederation. 


568  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  discuss  the  Schleswig- 
Holstein  question.  Germany  had  always  coveted  Schleswig, 
which  was  half  Danish,  half  German,  and  which  possessed 
ports  which  would  have  been  of  the  greatest  use  to  her  fleet. 
Up  to  this  time  it  had  formed  part  of  Holstein,  but  in  1863  the 
king  of  Denmark  believed  himself  able  to  unite  it  definitely 
to  his  kingdom.  The  diet  protested,  and  the  federal  troops 
occupied  Holstein.  Count  Rechberg  was  at  that  time  the 
Austrian  minister  of  foreign  affairs  ;  he  had  declared  that  he 
had  no  intention  of  raising  the  question  of  nationality — a 
question  which  was  more  to  be  dreaded  by  Austria  than  any 
other  power — and  yet  he  allowed  himself  to  be  persuaded  by 
Bismarck  to  take  part  with  Prussia  in  the  federal  action. 
Twenty  thousand  Austrians  assisted  the  Prussians  in  their 
attack  on  Denmark  in  January,  1864,  and,  notwithstanding 
the  valour  of  the  Danes,  the  two  armies  had  an  easy  victory. 
The  Austrian  flag  floated  victoriously  in  the  North  Sea  under 
Admiral  Tegethoff",  and  by  the  30th  of  October,  Christian  IX. 
was  obliged  by  the  peace  of  Vienna  to  cede  to  the  conquerors 
all  rights  over  Schleswig,  Holstein,  and  Lauenburg. 

But  it  proved  less  easy  to  divide  the  spoil  than  it  had  been 
to  gain  it.  Evidently  the  duchies  were  situated  too  far  from 
Austria  for  it  to  be  wise  for  her  to  possess  either  the  whole  or 
part,  so  when  Prussia  offered  to  buy  her  rights  she  readily 
agreed.  On  the  14th  of  August,  1865,  the  convention  of 
Gastein  was  signed,  by  which  Austria  ceded  the  duchy  of 
Lauenburg  to  Prussia  for  12,500,000  francs,  a  sum  which 
represented  about  149  francs  per  inhabitant.  Holstein  still, 
however,  remained  in  the  possession  of  Austria,  while  Prussia 
kept  Schleswig.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  smaller  states  of 
Germany  protested  against  this  iniquitous  convention,  which 
entirely  ignored  their  rights.  Soon  after,  Prussia  off'ered  to 
buy  the  duchy  for  300  millions,  an  offer  which  was  refused 
by  Austria.  But  the  statesmen  at  Berlin  were  not  long  before 
they  found  a  pretext  for  quarrel.  They  complained  that  the 
government  of  Austria  in  Holstein  was  too  liberal,  and  took 


BATTLE   OF  S A  DOW  A.  5^9 

upon  themselves  to  interfere  in  it.  Austria  was  in  consequence 
compelled  to  prepare  for  war,  though  the  military  force  of 
Prussia  was  far  greater  than  hers,  and  though  Prussia  was 
strengthened  by  her  alliance  with  the  young  kingdom  of  Italy, 
always  longing  to  get  possession  of  Venetia,  and  to  whom 
Prussia  had  promised  a  subsidy  of  120  millions  of  francs.  It 
was  in  vain  that  Napoleon  III.  tried  to  settle  the  questions 
about  the  duchies  on  the  Elbe  and  Venetia  in  a  congress  5  his 
success  was  no  greater  than  it  had  been  in  the  Polish  matter. 

Austria  felt  both  her  honour  and  her  military  pride  at 
stake.  General  Gablenz  was  ordered  to  convoke  the  diet  of 
Holstein,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  wishes  of  the  country  as  to 
their  future  fate;  whereupon  Bismarck  declared  the  conven- 
tion of  Gastien  violated,  ordered  Holstein  to  be  occupied,  and 
called  out  the  Prussian  army.  The  smaller  German  states 
declared  against  Prussia ;  but,  in  spite  of  that,  she  was  soon 
in  possession  of  Hesse,  Saxony,  and  Hanover  (June,  1866). 
Baden,  Bavaria,  and  Wurtemburg  held  out  against  her,  but 
their  resistance  was  feeble.  Italy  sent  her  fleet  into  the 
Adriatic  and  her  troops  against  the  Quadrilateral,  while  the 
Prussians  entered  Bohemia,  and  a  terrible  campaign  followed. 
Instead  of  occupying  Saxony,  the  Austrian  general,  Benedek, 
awaited  the  enemy  below  the  passes  in  the  Bohemian  mountains. 
His  lieutenants,  Clam-Gallas  and  Gablenz,  were  successively 
defeated  at  Jicin  and  Nachod  on  the  26th  and  29th  of  June. 
He  himself  concentrated  his  troops  near  Kralove-Hradec 
(Koniggratz)  and  the  village  of  Sadowa,  and  here  a  great 
batde  was  fought  on  the  4th  of  July,  which  cost  the  Austrians 
20,000  prisoners,  160  g^^ms,  and  18,000  killed  and  wounded. 
Prague  and  a  great  part  of  Bohemia  were  immediately  occupied 
by  the  Prussians,  and  the  road  to  Vienna  lay  open,  the  enemy 
marching  upon  the  capital  by  the  Moravian  highway.  The 
preceding  year  the  topography  of  the  whole  district  had  been 
studied  most  carefully  by  staff-officers,  who  had  come  into 
Austria  disguised  as  hawkers  or  photographers. 

The  Austrians  were  more  fortunate  in  Italy.     They  were 


570  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

commanded  by  the  archduke  Albert,  the  son  of  the  victor  of 
Aspern,  and,  strongly  supported  in  the  Quadrilateral,  defeated 
the  Italians  at  Custozza  on  the  24th  of  June,  while  Admiral 
Tegethoff,  the  hero  of  the  young  Austrian  fleet,  defeated  them 
also  near  the  island  of  Lissa  on  the  i6th  of  July.  But  these 
successes  were  only  a  slight  consolation  to  the  military  pride 
of  Austria.  The  loss  of  Venice  was  inevitable,  and  on  the 
16th  of  July  the  preliminaries  of  a  peace  were  signed  at 
Mikulov  (Nikolsburg),  in  Moravia,  by  which  Venice  was 
given  up  to  the  emperor  of  the  French,  who  restored  it  to 
Italy. 

Peace  was  signed  at  Prague  on  the  3rd  of  August.  The 
dissolution  of  the  German  empire  and  the  exclusion  of  Austria 
from  the  German  confederation  were  acknowledged  by  the 
emperor  of  Austria,  who  abandoned  all  his  claims  to  the 
duchies  on  the  Elbe,  and  left  Prussia  to  arrange  matters  in 
Germany  as  she  pleased.  He  also  paid  the  conqueror  an 
indemnity  of  20  millions  of  thalers.  Thus,  after  half  a 
century  of  constant  efforts  to  maintain  her  supremacy  in  the 
one  and  her  power  in  the  other,  the  monarchy  was  finally 
excluded  from  both  Germany  and  Italy ;  and  she  found  her- 
self, with  her  army  destroyed  and  her  finances  ruined,  face  to 
face  with  her  Slav  and  Magyar  peoples,  of  whom  for  so  many 
years  she  had  made  use  as  the  passive  instruments  of  her 
thoughtless  ambition. 

Soon  after  all  these  disasters  the  sorely  tried  house  of 
Austria  was  called  upon  to  bear  another  sorrow.  Napoleon 
III.,  who  was  at  this  time  at  war  with  Juarez,  president  of 
Mexico,  took  it  into  his  head  to  offer  the  crown  of  that  distant 
country  to  the  archduke  Maximilian,  the  younger  brother  of 
the  emperor  Francis  Joseph.  He  was  a  liberal  and  enlightened 
prince.  As  one  of  the  vice-admirals  of  the  Austrian  fleet  and 
head  of  the  admiralty,  he  had  done  excellent  service,  while, 
as  governor-general  of  the  Lombardo- Venetian  kingdom,  he 
had  made  laudable  efforts  to  render  the  foreign  yoke  less 
heavy   on    the    Italians.     In    1864,  he  quitted   his   home   at 


ARCHDUKE  MAXIMILIAN.  571 

Miramar,  and  set  out  for  his  distant  empire  full  of  the  brightest 
hopes.  But  the  republican  party  in  Mexico  defended  their 
native  country  bravely  against  the  monarch  whom  France 
attempted  to  impose  on  her,  and  Maximilian,  abandoned  by 
his  army,  was  captured  under  the  walls  of  Queretaro,  con- 
demned to  death,  and  shot.  His  high  moral  and  intellectual 
qualities  have  made  his  memory  dear  to  Austria. 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

THE    DUAL   CONSTITUTION    (1867) 

Austria  after  Sadotva. 

The  situation  of  Austria  after  Sadowa  was  truly  pitiable.  Hun- 
gary and  Bohemia  were  in  a  state  of  profound  irritation,  many 
of  the  Magyars  making  no  secret  of  their  sympathy  with  Prussia. 
When,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Italian  war  in  1859,  Kossuth 
had  an  interview  with  Napoleon  IH.,  the  latter  had  hesitated 
whether  or  not  to  accept  help  from  the  revolutionary  party ; 
and  in  1866,  general  Klapka,  the  man  who  had  formerly  de- 
fended Komarom  (Comorn)  offered  to  get  together  a  Magyar 
regiment  to  help  Prussia,  and  the  prompt  conclusion  of  the  war 
had  alone  prevented  him  from  taking  part  in  the  campaign. 
In  Bohemia,  the  king  of  Prussia,  during  his  occupation  of  the 
province,  had  published,  with  more  diplomatic  skill  than 
honesty,  a  proclamation  to  "  the  proud  kingdom "  which 
extolled  its  past  history  and  recognized  its  rights,  and  the 
officials  of  the  Austrian  government  being  forced  to  leave  their 
posts,  the  Chekhs  had  had  at  that  time  an  opportunity  of 
trying  the  autonomy  which  they  had  so  long  desired.  Revo- 
lutionary pamphlets  had  been  scattered  by  millions  over  the 
districts  which  were  occupied  by  the  enemy.  The  minds  of 
the  populace  were  all  the  more  excited  because  the  Chekhs 
had,  at  the  beginning  of  the  campaign,  asked  for  arms  with 
which  to  defend  their  country — a  request  which  the  government 
at  Vienna  had  refused,  because  it  had  so  little  faith  in  their 


COUNT  BEUST.  573 

loyalty.  As  long  as  Austria  had  sought  to  find  her  centre  of 
gravity  outside  her  own  dominions,  in  Germany  or  in  Italy, 
she  might  defy  the  aspirations  of  her  people  with  impunity, 
and  defraud  them  of  their  ancient  privileges  on  the  plea  that 
the  modern  empire  required  their  sacrifice.  But  the  moment 
had  now  come  in  which  she  had  to  pay  for  a  policy  which  it 
had  become  impossible  to  maintain.  The  emperor  Francis 
Joseph  did  not  think  there  was  any  one  among  his  subjects 
who  could  carry  through  the  measures  which  had  become 
necessary.  Doubtless  he  feared  that  no  Austrian  could  be 
found  who  would  possess  sufficient  impartiality  to  enable  him 
to  reconcile  so  many  diverse  claims  and  conflicting  interests. 
He  therefore  summoned  Count  Beust  from  Dresden,  and  made 
him  minister  of  foreign  affairs.  Beust  had  up  to  this  time 
held  the  same  post  in  the  kingdom  of  Saxony,  and  was  the 
inventor  of  the  German  alliance  to  which  Prussia  had  just  put 
an  end.  Belcredi  was  still  minister  of  the  interior,  but  it  was 
very  well  known  that  the  Saxon  baron  had  been  sent  for  to 
arrange  the  final  position  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  States.  So 
we  find  Austria  at  the  very  moment  when  she  was  thrust  out 
of  the  German  confederation  borrowing  from  Germany  one 
of  her  leading  statesmen  ! 

Agreement  with  Hungary — The  Dual  Government  (1867.) 

Count  Beust  was  a  foreigner,  and  one  fact  alone  seems  to 
have  struck  him  in  the  internal  history  of  the  country,  and 
that  was  that  in  the  years  1848  and  1849  the  Hungarians  had 
been  able  to  organize  a  formidable  revolt,  that  they  had 
declared  the  rule  of  the  Habsburgs  at  an  end,  and  that  with- 
out their  help  it  would  be  quite  impossible  to  found  any 
lasting  government.  As  a  German,  he  could  not  be  suspected 
of  any  sympathy  with  the  Slavs.  His  advice  was  that  an 
understanding  should  first  of  all  be  arrived  at  with  the  Mag- 
yars, and  consequently  the  various  diets  were  convoked  for 
the  19th  of  November,  1866.  The  destinies  of  the  empire  were 
decided  at  Pesth,  when  the  new  minister  made  up  his  mind  to 


574  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

treat  only  with  the  Hungarians.  A  saying  is  attributed  to 
him  which,  whether  it  be  true  or  false,  exactly  describes  his 
policy  ;  "  Take  care  of  your  hordes,"  he  said  to  an  Hungarian 
statesman,  "and  we  will  take  care  of  ours."  The  hordes  of 
the  Hungarians  were  the  Croats,  Servians,  Roumanians,  and 
Slovaks  ;  the  Austrian  hordes  were  the  Chekhs,  the  Slovenes, 
Dalmatians,  Poles,  and  Ruthenians  ;  on  both  sides  a  majority 
held  in  check  by  the  coalition  of  two  minorities.  The 
Aiisgleich,  or  agreement  with  Hungary,  was  arranged  by  a 
committee  of  sixty-seven  members  of  the  Hungarian  diet,  at 
the  head  of  whom  was  the  Franklin  of  Hungary,  Francis  Deak, 
that  true  patriot  and  inexorable  legist,  who  had  taken  no  part 
in  the  revolutions,  but  who  had  never  given  up  one  of  the 
smallest  of  the  rights  of  his  country. 

A  committee  of  sixty-seven  first  of  all  demanded  that 
the  sovereign  should  recognize  the  political  individuality  of 
Hungary  by  giving  to  her  a  special  ministry,  and  the  con- 
tinuity of  her  historical  rights  by  being  crowned  as  his  pre- 
decessors had  been.  Both  these  points  were  granted  without 
discussion. 

On  the  1 8th  of  February,  1867,  the  diet  learned  that  a 
ministry  had  been  formed,  and  that  its  president  was  that 
count  Julius  Andrassy  who  had  been  one  of  the  emigrants  of 
1849.  A  few  days  before  that  date,  Belcredi,  the  federalist 
minister,  had  sent  in  his  resignation.  On  the  8th  of  June,  the 
emperor  Francis  Joseph  was  crowned  with  great  pomp  at  Pesth. 
On  the  28th  of  the  following  June,  he  approved  the  decisions 
of  the  diet,  which  settled  the  position  of  Hungary  with  regard 
to  the  other  countries  belonging  to  his  majesty,  and  modified 
some  portions  of  the  laws  of  1848.  The  following  is  a  short 
summary  of  this  important  document,  which  officially  recog- 
nized the  dual  government,  and  is  still  the  charter  of  the 
Austrian  empire. 

The  first  articles  enumerate  the  general  rights  of  the  king- 
dom, as  contained  in  the  act  of  inauguration  and  the  corona- 
tion oath  ;  the  king  excuses  himself  for  not  having,  "owing  to 


THE  AUSGLEICH.  575 

circumstances,"  being  earlier  crowned,  and  renews  the  engage- 
ments of  his  predecessors  m.  all  that  concerns  the  constitution, 
independence,  privileges,  and  territorial  integrity  of  Hungary. 
He  then  states  that  he  is  to  exercise  the  executive  power 
himself,  that  of  the  palatine  is  to  come  to  an  end,  and  the 
election  of  a  new  palatine  is  to  be  indefinitely  postponed. 
(The  office  had  become,  in  fact,  a  useless  piece  of  machinery, 
now  that  there  was  a  responsible  cabinet  settled  at  Pesth.) 
That  if  the  diet  shall  be  dissolved  before  voting  the  budget, 
then  a  'new  diet  must  be  convoked  within  the  year.  That 
the  defence  of  the  integrity  of  the  empire  is  to  be  considered 
the  common  business  of  Hungary  and  all  the  other  states  of  the 
empire,  just  as  foreign  affairs  are  common  to  all ;  but  that 
the  Hungarian  diet  alone  is  to  have  the  right  of  voting  the 
Hungarian  contingent.  The  finances,  so  far  as  concern  the 
army  and  foreign  affairs,  are  to  be  common.  The  relative 
financial  liabilities  of  Austria  and  Hungary  are  to  be  arranged 
by  negociation  between  the  diet  at  Pesth  and  the  parliament 
of  Vienna.  Hungary  is  only  to  enter  into  relations  with 
constitutional  governments,  it  is  therefore  necessary  that  the 
other  nationalities  shall  be  legally  represented  in  a  legislative 
assembly.  A  special  ministry  is  to  be  created  to  deal  with 
affairs  common  to  the  whole  empire.  Hungary  does  not 
recognize  the  central  parliament,  but  is  to  treat  with  the 
other  countries  on  a  footing  of  perfect  equality.  She  is  to 
choose  a  delegation  from  her  two  chambers,  who  are  to  arrange, 
with  a  delegation  from  the  parliament  ^'  of  the  other  countries," 
all  common  affairs.  The  two  delegations  shall  meet  alter- 
nately at  Vienna  and  Pesth  ;  they  shall  discuss  pubhc  business 
in  writing,  and  each  shall  use  whatever  language  suits  it,  and 
the  same  number  of  members  shall  always  be  sent  by  the 
two  diets.  The  common  ministry  is  to  be  equally  subject  to  the 
two  bodies  of  delegates,  whose  special  business  is  the  discus- 
sion of  the  common  budget.  The  decisions  of  the  delegates 
are  to  be  published  in  Hungary  by  the  national  ministers. 
The  right  of  initiative  is  to  belong  to  both  bodies  of  delegates. 


576  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARV. 

If  either  of  the  two  parliaments  is  dissolved,  its  delegation 
is  ipso  facto  dissolved  also.  Hungary  is  not  to  be  responsible 
for  debts  contracted  without  the  consent  of  the  diet.  The 
country  is  to  be  ready,  however,  to  accept  her  share  of  the 
common  debt  after  free  discussion.  The  Hungarian  diet  is 
to  have  the  right  of  concluding  commercial  treaties  with  the 
other  countries  of  the  monarchy ;  exercising  this  power  it 
accepts  the  Austrian  customs  union,  whose  revenues  are 
applied  to  the  common  defence  of  the  empire.  The  coinage 
is  to  be  uniform,  but  Hungary  reserves  the  right  to  use  her 
own  language  on  the  coins. 

In  virtue  of  one  of  the  articles  quoted  above,  Hungary  took 
over  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  common  debt. 

Such  was  the  agreement  {Ausgleich)  which  the  obstinate 
wisdom  of  Francis  Deak  forced  the  two  parties  to  accept. 
This  upright  citizen,  whose  name  is  associated  with  one  of  the 
most  important  documents  in  the  national  history,  would 
accept  neither  dignities  nor  honours.  He  even  refused  a 
portfolio  in  the  new  Hungarian  ministry,  and  contented 
himself  with  remaining  the  leader  of  the  moderate  party  in 
the  diet,  the  party  desirous  of  maintaining  the  privileges  both 
of  the  Hungarians  and  of  the  dynasty,  and  the  integrity  of  the 
Austrian  empire. 

One  consequence  of  the  reconciliation  was-  a  general 
amnesty  for  Hungary ;  but  Kossuth,  who  had  once  pro- 
claimed the  fall  of  the  Habsburg  dynasty,  refused  to  take 
advantage  of  it,  and  remained  a  voluntary  exile  in  Italy. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  triumph  of  Francis  Deak  was 
the  triumph  of  a  good  cause,  defended  with  courage,  honesty, 
and  perseverance,  and  liberal  Europe  did  well  when  she 
applauded  it.  But  the  brilliant  picture  has  more  than  one 
shadow.  With  their  usual  selfishness,  the  Magyars  thought 
of  no  one  but  themselves.  They  have  had  recourse  to 
measures  far  from  legitimate,  in  order  to  reduce  to  obedience 
some  of  the  races,  such  as  the  Croats,  who  proved  refractory 
to  their  leadership ;   and  they  used  their  victory  as  a  means 


CJSLEITHANIA   AND    TRANSLEITHANIA.  57/ 

for  enabling  them  to  oppress  with  harsh  laws  the  Roumanians, 
Servians,  and  Slovaks,  whose  grievances  have  reached  Western 
Europe  repeatedly  through  the  press.  All  the  non-Magyar  races 
have  remained  in  a  kind  of  serfdom,  except  the  Croats,  who, 
thanks  to  the  strength  of  their  historical  claims,  have  succeeded 
in  obtaining  a  fair  share  of  self-government  and  a  special 
ministry  at  Pesth.  But  to  keep  these  people  down,  the 
Hungarians  are  obliged  to  ally  themselves  with  the  Austrian 
Germans,  for  they  know  that  the  emancipation  of  the  Slavs  of 
Bohemia,  Carinthia,  and  Carniola  would  give  moral  force  to 
the  Servians  and  Slovaks  which  might  be  turned  against  their 
rulers  at  any  moment. 

Since  the  Ausgleich  the  empire  has  consisted  of  two  parts — 
the  kingdom  of  Hungary  and  "the  kingdoms  and  countries 
represented  in  the  Reichsrath,  or  the  other  lands  belonging  to 
his  Majesty,"  as  is  said  in  official  documents.  For  the  sake  of 
clearness,  political  language  has  been  increased  by  the  inven- 
tion of  two  new  terms,  "  Cisleithania  "  and  "  Transleithania," 
to  describe  the  two  groups,  separated  a  little  below  Vienna  by 
a  small  affluent  of  the  Danube,  called  the  Leitha — a  stream 
which  never  expected  to  become  so  celebrated.  The  empire 
possesses  three  ministries.  The  Hungarian  ministry  at  Pesth 
consists  of  a  president  of  the  council,  and  ministers  of  the 
court,  of  public  worship  and  education,  of  public  works,  of 
finance,  of  justice,  of  agriculture,  of  the  interior,  and  of  the 
defence  of  the  country.  The  Cisleithanian  ministry,  which 
has  its  seat  in  Vienna,  consists  of  the  same  members,  with  the 
exception  of  the  minister  of  the  court ;  while  the  common 
cabinet  is  made  up  of  the  ministers  of  war,  finance,  and  foreign 
affairs  alone.  A  special  cabinet  was  created  later  on  for  Croatia 
and  Slavonia,  as  a  recognition  of  their  rights  of  self-government. 

Slav  Protests  against  the  Dual  Govenu/iefit. 

Though  the  work  of  reconciliation  between  Hungary  and 
the  sovereign  was  accomplished  so  easily,  we  must  not  suppose 
that  it  was  equally  easy  in  "the  other  countries  belonging  to 

2    p 


578  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

his  Majesty."  The  diets  of  Cisleithania  had  been  convoked 
at  the  same  time  as  that  of  Pesth,  but  they  were  not  consulted, 
as  the  Hungarian  diet  had  been,  as  to  the  form  they  would  wish 
to  give  to  their  connection  with  the  sovereign  and  the  other 
nations  of  the  empire,  but  were  simply  invited  to  send  deputies 
to  a  Reichsrath  which  was  shortly  to  meet  at  Vienna.  This 
was  deciding  the  question  beforehand.  If  the  Magyars  could 
refuse  to  allow  themselves  to  be  absorbed  into  one  sole 
monarchy,  the  Slavs  had  quite  as  much  right  to  protest  against 
a  government  of  close  centralization,  such  as  was  now  offered 
to  them.  It  was  quite  true  that  the  Germans  were  sure  to 
like  such  an  arrangement,  which  favoured  their  pretensions, 
especially  as  the  electoral  law  of  Schmerling  secured  their 
ascendency  in  a  great  part  of  the  empire  ;  and  the  Galician 
Poles,  possessing  no  historical  rights,  and  seeing  their  fellow- 
countrymen  worse  treated  in  Prussia  and  Russia,  might  fairly 
hope  to  be  better  off  if  they  submitted  to  the  laws  of  count 
Beust ;  therefore  both  Germans  and  Galicians  consented  to  send 
deputies  to  Vienna.  But  the  Chekhs  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia, 
and  the  Slovenes  of  Carniola  were  desirous  of  affirming  their 
separate  existence,  and  refused  to  join  the  new  parliament. 
In  the  Bohemian  diet  Rieger  pointed  out  the  dangers  of 
the  dual  government  and  a  Germanizing  policy  with  talent 
and  energy.  The  sympathy  which  ever  since  the  events  of 
1863,  had  been  felt  for  the  Poles  by  the  Bohemians  was  very 
much  cooled  by  the  adhesion,  of  Galicia  to  count  Beust's  policy, 
and  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  in  Bohemia  and  the  other 
Slav  countries,  dreading  the  triumph  of  the  German  policy, 
made  advances  to  Russia,  in  whom  they  thought  they  saw 
their  only  possible  protector  from  German  greed.  When  an 
ethnographical  exhibition  was  held  in  Moscow,  in  1867,  and 
some  of  the  leading  Slavs  went  to  it,  their  journey  was  much 
talked  of  both  in  the  Austrian  empire  and  the  rest  of  Europe. 
This  Slav  congress  in  Moscow  was  considered  by  some 
people  ae  similar  to  the  one  which  had  been  held  in  Prague, 
in  1848,  but  which,  owing  to  the  disturbances  of  the  time,  had 


CISLEITHANIAN  MINISTRY.  579 

failed  to  obtain  any  results.  However  that  may  be,  it  is 
certain  that  had  the  Austrian  empire  broken  up  at  that  time 
the  Chekhs  would  not  have  hesitated  to  prefer  Russia,  who 
had  never  done  them  any  harm,  to  Germany,  who  was  their 
hereditary  enemy.  Meantime  the  Slavs  of  Bohemia  and 
Moravia  observed  a  policy  of  passive  opposition  to  the  parlia- 
ment at  Vienna,  obstinately  refusing  to  send  deputies  to  the 
Reichsrath.  Such  a  policy  had  been  successful  with  the 
Magyars,  and  the  Chekhs  claimed  for  the  kingdom  of  St. 
Vacslav  exactly  the  same  rights  as  those  that  belonged  to  the 
kingdom  of  St.  Stephen.  These  questions  of  nationality  and 
historical  rights  were,  however,  not  well  understood  in  Western 
Europe,  and  the  abstention  of  the  Chekhs  was  attributed  to  a 
dislike  of  parliamentary  institutions. 

The  Cisleithanian  ministry,  presided  over  by  count  Beust, 
while  it  entirely  ignored  the  claims  of  the  various  nationalities, 
proceeded  to  bring  forward  a  series  of  liberal  measures  which 
earned  the  good  opinion  of  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  made 
certain  politicians  in  other  lands  demand  "  liberty  such  as  they 
have  in  Austria."  Foreigners  only  saw  the  liberal  measures 
which  received  the  signatures  of  the  new  cabinet ;  they  never 
troubled  their  heads  to  find  out  whether  they  were  actually 
carried  out  in  practice,  or  if  they  were  in  accordance  with  the 
real  wishes  of  the  various  nations  which  made  up  the  empire. 
The  very  existence  of  these  nations  was  hardly  known,  and 
generally  completely  ignored.  In  the  French  chamber,  in 
1866,  a  well-known  statesman  might  be  heard  pleading  the 
cause  of  Austria,  "which  contained,"  he  said,  "fifteen  millions 
of  Germans."  He  considered  the  Chekhs  of  Bohemia  and 
Moravia  as  Germans,  as  Avell  as  the  Slovenes  of  Styria, 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  and  Istria,  who  had  been  forced  into  the 
German  confederation  against  their  will,  and  who  j  were 
anxious  to  leave  it  at  the  first  opportunity. 

The  fundamental  law  of  the  21st  of  December,  1867,  on  the 
rights  of  citizens  in  the  kingdoms  and  countries  represented 
in  the  Reichsrath^  has  often  been  quoted  as  a  model  of  liberal 


580  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

legislation.  It  confirms  all  the  main  rights  of  citizens  before 
the  law,  the  inviolability  of  the  domicile,  the  rights  of  associ- 
ation, and  freedom  of  conscience  ;  and  it  includes  one  article 
(No.  19)  which  runs  thus  :  "All  the  races  of  the  empire  are 
on  a  footing  of  equality,  and  each  one  of  the  nations  severally 
has  a  right  that  the  inviolability  of  its  nationality  and  language 
shall  be  secured.  The  equality  of  all  languages  used  in  the 
empire  for  purposes  of  administration,  for  schools,  and  public 
life  is  recognized  by  the  state.  In  those  countries  which  are 
occupied  by  difierent  races,  all  public  educational  establish- 
ments ought  to  be  so  arranged  that  every  citizen  may  be  able 
to  make  use  of  all  the  means  necessary  for  instruction  without 
being  obliged  to  learn  a  second  language."  This  law,  which 
would  never  be  needed  in  a  country,  such  as  France  or  Italy, 
made  up  of  one  race  only,  is  most  needful  in  such  a  polyglot 
country  as  Cisleithania.  It  has  never  been  carried  out  loyally. 
The  Chekhs  of  Bohemia  asked  in  vain  for  a  Slav  university ;  ^ 
the  Slovenes  saw  their  primary  schools  placed  in  the  hands  of 
German  and  Italian  masters.  Such  a  state  of  things  was  all 
the  more  surprising  because,  when  the  government  thus  en- 
couraged the  encroachments  of  one  race  on  another,  it  really 
encouraged,  without  being  aware  of  it,  those  covetous  desires 
of  its  German  and  Italian  neighbours  of  which  it  could  not  be 
ignorant. 

Liberal  Reforms. 

The  first  parliamentary  ministry  of  Cisleithania  was  formed 
on  the  30th  of  December,  1867,  under  the  presidency  of 
Prince  Charles  of  Auersperg.  It  was  made  up  of  eight 
Germans  and  one  Pole,  Count  Potocki.  Its  first  work  was  to 
free  Austria  from  the  clerical  and  ultramontane  yoke  under 
which  she  had  lain  since  1855.  The  concordat  was  denounced. 
A  marriage  law  decided  that  marriages  could  be  contracted 
before  the  civil  authorities,  in  case  of  the  refusal  of  a  com- 
petent priest  to  solemnize  them,  and  that  all  disputes  con- 
'  Their  request  has  been  granted  in  the  last  few  years. 


LIBERAL  MEASURES.  58 1 

cerning  marriages  must  be  tried  before  the  ordinary  courts. 
Then  followed  a  law  concerning  schools  which  freed  education 
from  the  authority  of  the  Church,  but  as  this  law  encroached 
on  the  powers  of  self-government  possessed  by  the  provincial 
diets,  it  was  not  voted  without  difficulty,  the  Federalists,  the 
Poles,  Slovenes,  and  Tyrolese,  withdrawing  from  the  Reichsrath 
on  the  occasion ;  thanks,  however,  to  the  electoral  system  of 
Schmerling,  the  German  deputies  were  still  sufficiently  numerous 
to  enable  the  assembly  to  continue  its  deliberations, 

A  law  regulating  relations  between  members  of  different 
religious  bodies,  especially  in  the  matter  of  mixed  marriages, 
was  next  voted  (May  25,  1868).  The  court  of  Rome  and  some 
members  of  the  higher  Austrian  clergy  protested  against  these 
measures,  but  the  government  persisted  in  them,  and  even 
summoned  before  the  courts  some  of  the  bishops,  whose 
pastoral  letters  had  urged  their  flocks  to  disobey  them.  These 
energetic  measures  were  accompanied  by  financial,  judicial,  and 
military  reforms.  Trial  by  jury  was  restored,  even  in  cases  in 
which  the  press  was  concerned ;  but  we  shall  see  later  on  how 
this  great  reform  was  made  of  no  effect  among  the  races  who 
were  opposed  to  the  dual  government. 

A  financial  law  was  also  brought  forward  by  one  of  the 
ministers,  M.  Brest),  which  unified  the  national  debt,  and  in- 
creased the  tax  on  coupons  twenty  per  cent.  The  credit  of 
Austria  in  foreign  countries  was  seriously  injured  by  this 
measure.  A  military  law  which  was  passed  in  November, 
1868,  placed  the  army  on  the  same  footing  as  that  of  Prussia  ; 
it  was  in  future  to  contain  800,000  men  in  time  of  war,  and 
255,000  in  time  of  peace.  Every  citizen,  except  those  on 
the  military  frontiers,  where  the  old  arrangements  still  con- 
tinued, was  to  have  three  years  of  effective  service,  to  be  five 
years  in  the  reserves,  and  two  in  the  landicchr.  A  force  of 
volunteers  serving  for  one  year  was  introduced,  and  the 
efficiency  of  the  whole  army  increased  by  the  use  of  the  breech- 
loading  rifle.  In  the  years  1S70-1S71  the  war  office  was 
completely  reorganized. 


582  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  Resistance  of  Bohemia — The  Declaration  of  \Z(iZ. 

But  all  these  useful  reforms  must  not  close  our  eyes  to  the 
prolonged  struggle  of  the  races  and  provinces  to  preserve  their 
old  laws  and  their  right  of  self-government  against  the  attacks 
of  the  new  centralized  administration  of  Vienna.  Bohemia, 
which  had  never  been  consulted  at  the  time  of  the  agreement 
with  Hungary,  and  which  yet  believed  itself  to  possess  exactly 
the  same  rights,  had  never  ceased  to  protest  against  what  had 
been  done,  and  in  1867,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  Chekhs 
refused  to  send  deputies  to  Vienna.  As  soon  as  the  right  of 
public  meeting  was  admitted,  enormous  gatherings  were  held, 
at  which  they  claimed  the  restoration  of  their  old  privileges, 
and  in  1868  the  emperor  Francis  Joseph  came  to  Prague  and 
had  interviews  with  the  chiefs  of  the  national  party,  Palacky, 
Rieger,  and  Clam-Martinitz ;  these  interviews,  however,  led  to 
no  solution  of  the  difficulty.  Before  the  jury  law  was  passed 
ministers  showed  themselves  without  mercy  for  the  Bohemian 
press,  and  when  it  had  passed  a  curious  state  of  things  was 
produced.  Juries  in  Chekh  towns  did  not  fail  to  acquit  their 
fellow-countrymen,  so  the  newspaper-writers  were  sent  by  the 
government  to  be  tried  before  juries  in  German  towns,  such  as 
Reichenberg  and  Leitmeritz,  where  the  incriminated  articles 
could  not  even  be  read  in  the  original.  When  the  provincial 
diets  were  convoked,  the  Chekhs,  who,  ever  since  the  passing 
of  the  electoral  law  of  Schmerling,  had  been  kept  in  a  factitious 
minority,  refused  to  attend,  and  issued  a  manifesto,  known  by 
the  name  of  the  Declaration,  which  remains  to  this  day  as  the 
expression  of  their  claims. 

This  declaration  of  the  Chekh  deputies  was  dated  August 
22,  1868,  and  is  composed  of  eight  articles,  which  may  be  thus 
summed  up  :  I.  Between  Bohemia  and  the  sovereign  there 
exist  mutual  rights  and  duties  which  are  equally  binding  on 
both  parties.  II.  Austria  is  not  one  undivided  kingdom. 
The  kingdom  of  Bohemia  is  attached  to  the  rest  of  the  empire 
by  a  purely  personal  tie.     III.  No  alteration  in  this  state  of 


DECLARATION  OF  THE   CHEKHS.  583 

things   can   be  made  except  by  a  new  contract  between  the 
kingdom  and  the  dynasty.     IV.   No  assembly,  Reichsrath^  or 
chamber  of    deputies,  foreign    to    Bohemia   can   impose   on 
the  kingdom  the   debts  of  the  empire   or   any  other   pubhc 
burdens.     V.  The  Hungarians  have  a  right  to  treat  with  the 
sovereign   concerning   their   own   interests,  but   not   those  of 
Bohemia.     VI.  Cisleithania  is  a  division  of  the  country  which 
has   no   historical  foundation,  and  Bohemia  is  not  bound  to 
send   deputies   to  a   Cisleithanian  assembly.     VII.  The  con- 
stitutional questions  now  pending  between  the  sovereign  and 
the  Bohemian  nation  ought  to  be  regulated  by  common  agree- 
ment, and  the  representatives  of  the  political  Bohemian  nation 
should  be  chosen  "  on  the  basis  of  a  just  electoral  law  and  an 
honest  'election."     The  Slav  deputies   of  the  Moravian  diet 
published   a   similar   declaration    soon  after.     They  declared 
that  the  Rcichs7-dth  had  no  power  to   decide  what  were  the 
rights  of  the  various  races  and  kingdoms,  nor  what  were  the 
relations   which,    in   accordance    with    these    rights,    existed 
between   them.      "The   dual    government,"    they    said,    "is 
founded  neither  on  historical  nor  political  rights.     No  deputy 
from  the  margravate  of  Moravia  has  had  any  right  to  enter  into 
any  arrangement  with  t\\e.  Reichsrath  on  behalf  of  this  land" — it 
must  be   understood   that   they   were  German  deputies  who 
were   in  question — "  nor  to  give  up  the  legislative  power  and 
political  rights  of  the  Moravian  diet  to  the  parliament  of  any 
other  country.     The  constituent  power  of  the  Reichsrath   is 
based  on  a  manifest  violation  of  ancient  laws,  and  its  decisions 
are  null  and  void.     No  arrangement  is   possible  unless  it  is 
founded   on   our  historical  rights,  and  is  entered  into  by  the 
sovereign   in   agreement   with   our   lawfully   constituted    and 
elected  diet."     In  accordance  with  this  declaration,  the  Chekh 
deputies  of  Moravia  refused  to  take  any  part  in  the  diet  held 
at   Brno  (Briinn),  as  they  considered  that  it  was  not  a  "  law- 
fully constituted  and  elected  diet." 

The  fifth  centenary   of  the  birth  of  John  Hus,    in  July, 
1 868,  afforded  an  opportunity  for  further  manifestations  of  the- 


584  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HVNGARY. 

national  feeling,  and  the  crisis  reached  such  a  point  that  the 
government  proclaimed  Prague  in  a  state  of  siege,  and  it 
remained  so  down  to  April  29,  1869.  Those  who  had  signed 
the  declaration  were  re-elected  in  Bohemia  as  well  as  in 
Moravia  for  the  diet  of  this  year.  Finding  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  get  the  Chekhs  and  Moravians  to  the  parliament  at 
Vienna,  the  government  now  hit  upon  the  plan  of  having  the 
deputies  for  the  Reichsrath  elected  directly  by  the  electors,  and 
not  by  the  diets ;  but  this  measure  was  not  tried  until  a  good 
deal  later  on,  and  when  it  was  tried  it  did  not  produce  the 
desired  effect.  On  several  occasions  successive  cabinets  made 
offers  based  on  the  existing  constitution  to  the  leaders  of  the 
national  party,  but  it  was  precisely  this  constitution  which  the 
Chekhs  refused  to  accept.  They  insisted  on  the  terms  pro- 
posed in  the  declaration,  and  things  remained  in  this  state  down 
to  the  time  of  the  Franco-German  war. 

The  Galiciaji  Resolution  (1868) — The  Insurrection  of  the 
Bocchese  (1869). 

In  Galicia,  the  Poles  and  Ruthenians  possessed  no  his- 
torical rights  in  the  monarchy,  and  had  no  contract  with  the 
dynasty  to  invoke ;  they  were  consequently  more  conciliatory 
than  the  Chekhs.  Notwithstanding  the  efforts  of  the  Smolka 
party,  which  was  desirous  of  entering  into  a  close  alliance  with 
the  latter,  the  diet  of  Lwow  (Lemberg),  under  the  influence 
of  Goluchowski,  had  voted  for  the  sending  of  their  deputies 
to  the  Reichsrath,  and  by  so  doing  had  recognized  the  new 
constitution.  Most  of  the  Poles  only  looked  upon  themselves 
as  temporary  guests  within  the  Austrian  monarchy,  and 
troubled  themselves  little  about  the  interests  of  other  countries 
or  races.  Whilst  waiting  for  better  times  they  did  all  they  could 
to  obtain  the  best  terms  possible  for  themselves,  and  they 
looked  forward  to  making  Galicia  merely  the  'basis  on  which 
to  restore  the  Poland  of  their  dreams.  There  was,  how- 
ever, a  federalist  and  democratic  party,  amongst  them,  and 
this  party  expressed  its  views  in  a  resolution  something  like 


INSURRECTION  OF   THE  BOCCHESE.  585 

the  declaration  of  the  Chekhs.  In  September,  1868,  they 
drew  up  the  following  programme  :  Deputies  to  the  Reichsrath 
can  be  nominated  by  the  diet  only;  the  central  government 
has  no  power  to  order  direct  elections ;  the  Galician  deputies 
can  take  no  part  in  the  deliberations  of  the  Reichsrath  except 
on  matters  common  to  Galicia  and  the  Cisleithanian  countries ; 
the  diet  alone  has  power  to  decide  all  questions  concerning 
the  commerce  of  the  country,  its  finance,  rights  of  citizenship, 
laws  concerning  foreigners,  education,  justice,  and  administra- 
tion ;  Galicia  must  have  a  supreme  court  of  appeal ;  and  she 
demands  a  separate  government,  which  shall  be  responsible  to 
her  diet,  and  a  responsible  ministry. 

There  is  no  need  to  say  that  these  claims  were  all  rejected 
by  the  Germans,  who,  thanks  to  the  electoral  system  which  we 
have  already  explained,  formed  the  factitious  majority  of  the 
Reichsrath.  When  submitted  to  this  assembly,  in  1869,  they 
were  met  by  the  previous  question.  The  Ruthenian  deputies 
also  opposed  them,  because  they  dreaded  lest  the  Poles  should 
become  too  powerful,  and  looked  for  support  from  an  energetic 
central  power.  In  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  empire  also, 
numerous  meetings  were  held  by  the  Slovenes,  who  demanded 
the  formation  of  a  kingdom  of  either  Slovenia  or  of  Illyria,  which 
should  include  Trieste,  Istria,  Gorica,  Gradisca,  Carniola,  South- 
ern Carinthia,  and  Southern  Styria.  The  struggle  was  not  less 
lively  in  the  diet  of  Zara  in  Dalmatia,  between  the  Italian 
ministry,  supported  by  the  government  which  was  everywhere 
hostile  to  the  Slavs,  and  the  representatives  of  the  Servo-Croats. 
Towards  the  end  of  1869  an  insurrection  broke  out  in  the 
Bocche  de  Cattaro.  The  Servians  of  this  district  are  a  warlike 
race,  very  like  the  men  of  Montenegro.  They  refused  to 
allow  the  new  law  about  the  latidivehr  to  be  carried  out.  They 
were  ready  to  take  up  arms  in  defence  of  their  mountains,  but 
they  refused  to  allow  themselves  to  be  enrolled  in  the  regular 
army  and  to  be  turned  into  kaiserliks.  They  took  up  arms. 
A  state  of  siege  and  martial  law  were  in  vain  proclaimed, 
nor    could    the    resources    of    strategy    employed    by    two 


586  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Austrian  generals  succeed  in  reducing  these  able  marksmen 
to  obedience.  General  Rodich,  a  countryman  of  their  own, 
was,  however,  more  successful ;  he  subdued  the  Bocchese 
more  by  persuasion  than  by  force,  and  the  revolt,  in  which 
many  lives  had  been  lost,  was  terminated  by  the  amnesty  of 
December,  1869. 

Grievances  of  t/ie  Servians,  Croats,  and  Roumanians  against 
the  Hungarians. 

In  Hungary  itself  the  Magyars  displayed  great  harshness 
towards  the  races  who  had  been  sacrificed  to  them  by  the 
Atisgleich.  M.  de  Laveleye  has  said,  with  great  acuteness, 
"  The  Hungarians  can  only  see  what  they  wish  to  see ; 
to  everything  else  they  are  blind."  The  Croats  had  always 
been  dissatisfied  with  the  conditions  which  the  Magyars 
endeavoured  to  impose  on  them,  and  in  1866  their  diet  had 
passed  a  number  of  resolutions  declaring  that  Croatia  would 
give  up  no  portion  of  her  right  to  self-government,  that  she 
had  no  longer  any  intention  of  sending  her  representatives  to 
the  Hungarian  diet,  but  that  she  should  treat  directly  with  the 
sovereign.  In  consequence  of  this  they  refused  to  send  any 
deputies  to  the  diet  at  Pesth,  whereupon  the  Magyars  twice 
dissolved  the  diet  of  Zagreb  (Agram),  first  in  January,  and  then 
in  May,  1867.  The  Croat  diet  on  its  side  refused  to  vote  the 
measures  proposed  at  Pesth,  and  protested  against  the  annexa- 
tion by  Hungary  of  the  port  of  Fiume,  a  place  which  was 
claimed  by  each  of  the  kingdoms.  Bishop  Strossmayer,  who 
was  the  soul  of  the  opposition  in  Croatia,  and  who  afterwards 
took  so  distinguished  a  part  in  the  council  of  the  Vatican, 
w^as  in  consequence  sent  into  exile ;  and  a  man  of  doubtful 
character,  whose  name  had  been  associated  with  some  scan- 
dalous speculations,'  was  appointed  locum  tenens  hanalis  of 
Croatia.  The  Hungarian  government  finally  had  recourse  to 
an  expedient  which  recalls  the  measures  employed  by  Schmerl- 
ing  ;  they  altered  the  law  concerning  elections  for  the  diet, 
and  so  obtained  a  subservient  assembly,  which  enabled  them 


GRIEVANCES  OF   THE  SLAVS.  587 

to  carry  out  their  designs.  The  majority  which  they  obtained 
by  this  manoeuvre  concluded  a  treaty  with  the  Magyars,  which, 
however,  could  only  be  of  a  merely  temporary  character  and 
had  to  be  subsequently  modified ;  by  it  the  Croats  agreed  to 
send  thirty-one  deputies  to  the  parliament  at  Pesth  ;  to  have 
no  responsible  minister  of  their  own  at  Pesth ;  to  consent  that 
the  ban  at  Zagreb  (Agram)  should  exercise  only  executive 
authority,  without  adding  military  to  civil  power  ;  and  that  the 
Croatian  taxes  should  be  paid  into  the  Hungarian  treasury, 
with  the  exception  of  2,200,000  florins,  which  were  to  be  kept 
for  the  needs  of  Croatia.  A  certain  amount  of  autonomy  was 
still  left  to  the  country,  but  it  felt  itself  deeply  injured  by  the 
alterations  which  had  been  made  in  the  diet,  by  the  character 
of  the  ban  appointed  to  rule  over  it,  and  by  the  persecutions 
inflicted  on  every  organ  of  the  national  party.  The  reign  of 
terrorism  was  so  complete  at  Zagreb  that  independent  news- 
papers had  to  be  published  in  Vienna.  Later  on,  in  1873, 
Croatia  obtained  a  more  equitable  arrangement  and  a  respon- 
sible ministry  at  Pesth. 

But  even  now  the  grievances  of  the  Croats  against  the  Mag- 
yars are  far  from  being  at  an  end,  and  they  must  exist  so  long  as 
Hungary  continues  to  treat  as  she  does  the  Servians,  Slovaks, 
and  Roumanians.  While  the  Magyars  repress  the  Slav  and 
Roumanian  races  they  give  the  Germans  complete  freedom. 
What  Germans  are  allowed  to  do  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
immediately  after  the  Franco-Prussian  War  in  1861,  a  review 
clothed  in  the  colours  of  the  German  empire  made  its  appear- 
ance at  Pozsony  (Pressburg).  It  was  proudly  entitled  Die 
Deutsche  Wacht  an  der  Donaic  ("  The  German  Watch  on  the 
Danube"),  and  was  the  counterpart  of  "The  Watch  on  the 
Rhine."  In  consequence  of  the  agreement  of  1867,  the  office  of 
the  Servian  voicvode  has  been  suppressed,  and  the  Servian 
lands  have  been  incorporated  once  more  in  the  kingdom  of  St. 
Stephen.  The  Magyars  have  done  everything  in  their  power 
to  make  the  land  Hungarian  in  feeling,  and  even  pretend  that 
the  Servians  are  nothing  more  than  a  religious  sect.      They 


588  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

oblige  them  to  attend  Magyar  schools,  and  have  persecuted  the 
Servian  newspaper,  Zastava,  whose  editor,  Miletic,  has  had  to 
pass  part  of  his  life  in  prison,  in  spite  of  his  inviolability  as 
one  of  the  deputies  to  the  parliament  at  Pesth. 

The  Omladina,  a  literary  society  of  Servian  students,  and 
the  Matiisa,  a  society  for  the  publication  of  Servian  books,  have 
both  been  the  objects  of  harsh  measures.  Among  the  Slovaks 
the  higher  schools  have  been  closed  and  the  Matiisa  sup- 
pressed ;  these  measures  have  been  justified  on  the  plea  of 
Pan  slavism,  but  they  left  behind  them  a  feeling  of  profound 
irritation. 

The  Roumanians  have  not  been  any  more  fortunate  than 
the  Slavs.  On  May  15,  1868,  they  held  a  meeting  near 
Blasin,  in  memory  of  the  one  held  twenty  years  before  on  the 
same  spot.  On  this  occasion  they  once  more  demanded  their 
recognition  as  a  nation  by  the  side  of  the  Szeklers,  Saxons,  and 
Magyars  ;  but  the  diet  at  Pesth,  when  it  annexed  Transylvania 
to  Hungary  as  a  mere  province  of  that  kingdom,  completely 
put  an  end  to  all  their  hopes. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

AUSTRO-HUNGARY   FROM    1867-1S78. 

Efforts  towaj-ds  Federation — The  Hohenwart  Ministry  (187 1). 

As  might  have  been  expected,  the  Ausgleich  of  1867  only 
satisfied  the  Magyars  and  the  German  population  of  Austria ; 
the  Poles  of  Galicia  put  up  with  it  as  a  merely  temporary 
arrangement,  while  doing  all  in  their  power  to  make  it  sub- 
servient to  their  plans  for  the  future ;  all  the  other  races  made 
no  secret  of  their  dislike  towards  it.  The  position  of  the 
cabinet  of  Cisleithania  was  extremely  difficult,  as  disputes  con- 
tinually arose  in  the  Reichsrath^  and  deputies  from  Tyrol, 
Galicia,  and  Slavonia  in  turn  refused  to  sit  in  the  assembly. 
One  ministry  succeeded  another  in  rapid  succession.  One  of 
them,  under  the  leadership  of  Potocki,  tried  to  bring  in  a 
measure  which  was  meant  to  satisfy  the  federalist  party,  while 
at  the  same  time  endeavouring  to  maintain  the  constitution  of 
1867.  It  proposed  that  the  upper  chamber  should  be  com- 
posed of  members  elected  by  the  various  diets  ;  while  the 
Reichsrath  should  be  made  up  of  deputies  chosen  by  direct 
election.  This  arrangement  would  have  given  some  recogni- 
tion to  the  sentiment  of  nationality,  but  it  came  to  nothing,  and 
the  position  of  affairs  was  soon  still  further  complicated  by  the 
breaking  out  of  the  Franco-German  War.  The  military  con- 
dition of  Austria  at  the  time  was  not  such  as  to  justify  her 
either  in  rendering  aid  to  France  or  in  taking  revenge  on 
Prussia  or  Sadowa.     The  government  was  left  in  the  hands  of 


590  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  German  majority,  who  applauded  the  success  of  their 
Prussian  compatriots,  and  celebrated  the  praises  of  the  new 
Germany  in  newspapers  inspired  by  Berlin.  The  Magyars  also 
for  the  most  part  rejoiced  in  the  Prussian  victories,  as  they 
believed  that  if  Cisleithania  were  only  once  absorbed  into  the 
Greater  Germany,  they  would  have  their  hands  free  for  the 
realization  of  all  their  ambitious  dreams  for  their  own  country. 
Things  were  in  this  position  when  the  emperor  deemed  it 
advisable  to  place  at  the  head  of  affairs  a  cabinet  which  was 
to  attempt  to  carry  out  a  federalist  policy  (February,  187 1). 
Count  Hohenwart,  governor  of  Upper  Austria,  was  its  leader. 
He  at  once  proceeded  to  give  two  of  the  portfolios  to  Chekhs, 
naming  M.  Jirecek  minister  of  education,  and  M.  Habetinek 
minister  of  justice,  two  appointments  which  left  no  doubt  as  to 
the  policy  of  the  new  cabinet :  evidently  its  first  object  was  to 
satisfy  Bohemia.  But  the  task  before  them  was  a  hard  one ; 
they  had  to  deprive  the  Germans  of  that  supremacy  which, 
owing  to  the  actual  condition  of  the  law  of  election,  was  theirs 
without  dispute,  and  to  do  so  they  must  quarrel  with  Germans 
at  home  and  abroad.  One  of  the  leaders  of  the  German  party 
exclaimed  in  the  very  Reichsrath  itself,  "To  grant  Bohemia 
what  might  be  granted  to  Galicia  would  be  to  reduce  two 
millions  of  Germans  to  the  position  of  the  Ruthenians.  But 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  these  Germans  are  the  relatives  of  a 
great  people  who  are  their  near  neighbours P  Another  orator 
said,  "  We  have  not  conquered  at  Sedan  in  order  to  become 
the  helots  of  the  Chekhs ;  "  while  some  of  the  newspapers  drew 
comparisons  between  Bohemia  and  Schleswig,  and  alluded 
plainly  to  the  part  to  be  played  by  Prussia  as  liberator. 

Negociations  with  Bohemia — The  Fundamental  Articles. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  Count  Hohenwart  set  bravely  to  work. 
He  placed  himself  in  communication  with  Rieger  and  Palacky, 
the  political  leaders  of  Bohemia,  and  presented  to  the  Reichs- 
rath a  new  law,  which  enlarged  the  powers  of  the  provincial 
diets  and  granted  them  the  initiative  in  legislative  matters.  There 


NEGOCIATIONS    WITH  BOHEMIA.  59 1 

is  no  need  to  say  this  proposal  was  rejected,  A  little  later 
he  proposed  a  special  law  for  Galicia,  which  embodied  most  of 
the  principal  points  of  the  Galician  Resolution ;  and  when 
called  upon  to  state  if  he  intended  to  bring  forward  similar 
measures  for  the  other  provinces,  he  frankly  declared  that  if 
Bohemia  would  be  satisfied  with  the  same  concessions  which 
he  was  prepared  to  make  to  Galicia,  he  should  not  hesitate  to 
offer  them  to  her.  This  was  the  signal  for  a  general  outbreak. 
The  Germans  in  the  Reichsrath  voted  an  address  to  the 
emperor,  in  which  they  declared  that  the  cabinet  no  longer 
enjoyed  their  confidence  (May  26).  The  sovereign  replied  by 
proroguing  both  the  Viennese  chambers,  and  on  the  12  th  of 
August  the  Reichsrath  was  dissolved.  The  provincial  diets  were 
summoned  for  the  following  14th  of  September.  In  the  mean- 
time official  negociations  were  carried  on  between  Vienna  and 
Prague,  and  a  scheme  was  drawn  up  by  Count  Clam  Martinitz 
and  Rieger,  who  has  played  a  part  in  Bohemia  similar  to  that  of 
Deak  in  Hungary,  and  on  this  scheme  the  final  reconciliation  of 
Bohemia  with  constitutional  government  was  to  be  based.  Both 
the  emperor  and  his  cabinet  showed  themselves  prepared  to  make 
important  concessions.  On  the  14th  of  September  the  Bohemian 
diet  was  opened  with  a  message  from  the  king.  The  Chekhs, 
who  had  been  absent  for  some  years,  now  took  their  seats, 
and,  thanks  to  the  new  elections,  in  which  for  the  first  time  the 
government  had  not  falsified  the  votes,  they  had  a  majority, 
even  in  spite  of  the  electoral  law  of  Schmerling.  The  royal 
message  promised  that  the  rights  of  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia 
should  be  recognized,  and  that  the  coronation  should  take 
place ;  it  then  invited  the  diet  to  say  by  what  means  a  cordial 
agreement  could  be  brought  about  between  the  kingdom  and 
the  rest  of  the  monarchy.  "  Recognizing  the  political  import- 
ance of  the  crown  of  Bohemia,"  said  the  emperor,  "  calling 
to  mind  the  renown  and  glory  which  that  crown  has  conferred 
upon  our  predecessors,  and  full  of  gratitude  for  the  fidelity 
with  which  the  Bohemian  nation  has  supported  our  throne, 
we  are  ready  to  recognize  the  rights  of  the  kingdom  and  to 


592  HISTORY  OF  AUSTKO-HVNGARY. 

repeat  this  recognition  by  the  coronation  oath."  This  declara- 
tion was  received  with  enthusiastic  joy  by  Bohemia,  Moravia, 
and  Carniola,  but  excited  great  wrath  among  the  Germans. 
Measures  embodying  a  new  law  of  election,  and  another  con- 
cerning the  various  nationalities,  were  laid  before  the  diet, 
whereupon  the  German  deputies  immediately  protested  and 
quitted  the  house.  A  commission  was,  however,  appointed  to 
draw  up  a  definite  scheme  which  should  settle  the  relations  of 
the  kingdom  of  Bohemia  with  the  rest  of  the  Austro- Hungarian 
empire,  and  the  Fundamental  Articles  were  the  result  of  its 
labours.  These  were  unanimously  agreed  to  by  the  diet  and 
then  forwarded  to  Vienna,  after  which  the  assembly  broke  up 
to  await  the  reply  of  the  sovereign. 

According  to  these  Fundamental  Articles,  Bohemia,  like 
Hungary,  was  to  be  represented  by  delegates,  who  were  to  be 
chosen  by  the  diet  at  Prague,  and  not  by  the  Reichsrath,  and 
these  delegates  were  to  vote  on  all  the  business  common  to  the 
empire.  All  communications  with  the  other  Cisleithanian  states 
were  to  be  carried  on  by  means  of  these  deputies.  Bohemia 
was  to  have  full  powers  of  self-government,  and  the  only 
matters  which  were  to  be  considered  the  common  affairs  of 
the  monarchy  were  war,  foreign  affairs,  and  trade.  A  senate 
composed  of  members  nominated  by  the  emperor  was  to  settle 
all  differences  which  might  arise  between  the  various  kingdoms 
and  states  of  the  empire.  And,  finally,  the  representation  of  the 
towns  and  rural  communities  was  to  be  considerably  increased, 
a  measure  which  would  secure  to  the  Chekh  nation  that 
influence  in  the  kingdom  which  belonged  to  it  by  right  both 
of  its  numbers  and  its  past  history.  The  diet  of  Moravia 
accepted  these  Funda?nental  Articles,  and  at  the  same  time 
demanded  the  establishment,  or  rather  the  re-establishment, 
of  a  special  chancery  for  the  countries  of  St.  Vacslav.  All 
the  Slavs  of  the  empire  ardently  longed  for  the  success  of  a 
policy  which  must  lead  Austria  towards  federation,  and  put  an 
end  to  the  supremacy  of  the  German  and  Magyar  races. 

It  was  not  surprising  that  the  scheme  of  Messrs.  Rieger 


COALITION  OF   THE  EMPEROES.  593 

and  Clam  Martinitz  roused  the  utmost  anger  of  both  the 
Germans  and  the  Magyars.  We  have  already  pointed  out  why 
the  Magyars  dreaded  Slavism.  As  for  the  Austrian-Germans, 
there  were  very  few  among  them  who  put  in  practice  the  old 
maxim  of  Francis  II.,  " Justiiia  erga  omnes  nationes  est 
fiindamentum  Austricz"  Many  of  them  longed  for  a  Greater 
Germany,  and  would  have  welcomed  the  destruction  of  that 
nation  of  Chekhs  which  so  obstinately  stood  in  the  way 
between  Vienna  and  Berlin,  and  which,  as  was  often  said, 
was  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  of  Germany  {ehi  Pfahl  in  deutschen 
Fleische). 

Federation  checked. 

Although,  according  to  the  treaty  of  Prague,  Austria  was 
never  to  meddle  with  the  internal  affairs  of  Germany,  the  same 
rule  has  by  no  means  been  observed  by  Germany  as  regards 
Austria ;  Berlin  statesmen  have  continued  to  bestow  the 
same  jealous  attention  on  their  kinsmen  on  the  Upper 
Elbe  and  the  Danube  as  they  formerly  bestowed  on  their 
brethren  in  Schleswig  and  Alsace.  By  the  help  of  a  portion 
of  the  Viennese  press,  they  had  never  ceased  to  advocate 
the  claims  of  the  Germans  in  the  empire,  while  the  numerous 
interviews  between  the  emperors  for  which  the  baths  of  Gastein 
offered  a  convenient  excuse,  presented  opportunities  for  the 
interchange  of  plans  in  which  German  interests  certainly 
were  less  frequently  sacrificed  than  those  of  Austria.  In  the 
summer  of  187 1  these  interviews  were  unusually  frequent,  taking 
place  at  Ischl,  Salzburg,  and  Gastein  ;  the  emperor  of  Austria 
had  repeated  conversations  with  the  emperor  of  Germany,  and 
count  Bismarck  with  count  Andrassy.  The  whole  German 
and  Magyar  influence  was  thus  brought  to  bear  against  the 
hopes  of  Bohemia,  and  to  such  a  coalition  the  emperor  Francis 
Joseph  thought  himself  obliged  to  yield.  The  first  step  back- 
wards was  taken  by  the  government  when  it  declared  that  the 
Fundamental  Articles  must  be  submitted  to  the  approaching 
Reichsrath.     To  all  who  knew  how  that   assembly  was  com- 

2   Q 


594  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

posed,  the  result  of  such  a  step  could  not  be  doubtful.  M. 
Rieger  went  to  Vienna,  and  made  a  final  effort  to  get  the 
sovereign  to  fulfil  his  engagements,  but,  less  fortunate  than 
Deak,  he  failed  in  his  attempt.  In  spite  of  this  he  received  a 
most  enthusiastic  reception  when  he  returned  to  Prague.  In 
November,  187 1,  the  minister  Hohenwart  sent  in  his  resigna- 
tion j  Count  Beust — for  reasons  which  still  remain  obscure — 
was  relieved  of  his  office  of  chancellor,  and  sent  as  ambassador 
to  London ;  and  Andrassy,  head  of  the  Hungarian  cabinet,  was 
nominated  to  his  post,  thus  securing  the  preponderance  of  the 
Magyar  influence  in  the  counsels  of  the  empire. 

All  things  being  now  ready,  a  new  German  ministry,  pre- 
sided over  by  A.  Auersperg,  forced  the  king  to  break  the 
promises  he  had  made  with  Bohemia,  and  simply  invited 
the  diet  of  Prague  to  send  deputies  to  the  Rcichsrath.  Per- 
secutions of  the  Slav  press  began  again  with  renewed  vigour, 
and  a  spectacle  was  seen  such  as  had  never  before  occurred 
in  any  country  in  the  world — the  police  publicly  destroying 
copies  of  the  imperial  manifesto  which  recognized  the  rights 
of  Bohemia  and  promised  to  renew  them  in  the  coronation 
oath.  The  Bohemian  diet,  refusing  to  treat  with  any  other 
person  than  their  lawful  king,  was  dissolved,  as  were  also  the 
other  assemblies  (November  25),  and  a  new  Reichsrath  was 
summoned.  Notwithstanding  the  absence  of  the  whole  body 
of  federalists,  a  large  enough  number  of  deputies  obeyed  the 
summons  to  enable  the  sittings  to  take  place,  and  the  dual 
government  was  restored  in  full  vigour. 


Present  State  of  Austro-Hungary — Economical  Pivgress  and 
Liberal  Pefor?ns. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  forget  these  painful  and  irritating  con- 
flicts between  reasons  of  state  policy  and  historical  or  national 
rights.  The  final  conclusion  we  draw  from  our  study  of  these 
conflicts  is,  that  the  present  sovereign  of  Austro-Hungary  has 
not  yet  completely  succeeded  in  bringing  to  the  various  nations 


PRESENT  STATE   OF  THE  EMPIRE.  595 

who  compose  his  empire  an  era  of  justice  or  the  satisfaction  of 
their  legitimate  desires.  One  great  and  important  fact  has, 
however,  been  accomplished  in  his  reign  :  Austria  has  ceased 
finally  to  seek  for  her  centre  of  gravity  outside  herself;  she  has 
ceased  to  domineer  over  Germany  or  to  interfere  in  the 
internal  affairs  of  the  new  German  empire.  She  has  left,  never 
more  to  return  to  it,  the  Italian  peninsula,  in  which  she  used  to 
waste  so  much  of  her  military  strength,  her  credit,  and  renown. 
She  has  been  completely  reconciled  to  the  House  of  Savoy, 
and  the  friendly  visits  which  have  been  exchanged  between  the 
monarchs  at  Venice  and  Vienna  have  cemented  the  friendship 
between  the  old  monarchy  and  the  new  kingdom,  whose 
interests  are  no  longer  opposed,  and  who  can  only  gain  by 
being  friendly  neighbours.  It  is  quite  true  that  there  is  still  a 
party  in  Italy,  the  Italia  irredenta,  who  demand  the  restoration 
of  the  districts  of  Trent,  Trieste,  Istria,  and  perhaps  to-morrow 
may  lay  claim  to  Dalmatia  itself.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the 
Italian  portion  of  the  Tyrol  may  some  day  attempt  to  return 
to  Italy ;  but  as  regards  her  other  provinces  Austria  has  one 
very  simple  means  of  holding  Italian  greed  in  check  ;  she  has 
only  to  develop  that  Slavonic  element  which  constitutes  the 
numerical  majority  of  the  population,  and  which  has  no  wish 
whatever  to  be  absorbed  into  a  foreign  kingdom.  Of  all  the 
states  round  Austria,  Italy  is  the  one  who  has  now  the 
strongest  interest  in  the  maintenance  of  the  Habsburgs  in 
their  empire,  and  the  one  to  whom  their  ruin  would  cause  the 
greatest  risk  of  danger.  The  renunciation  of  all  claim  on 
Italy  by  Austria  may  be  looked  upon  as  an  event  fortunate 
for  both  parties.  She  might  be  equally  congratulated  on 
having  finally  quitted  Germany,  if  she  had  not  kept  in  her 
midst  a  German  minority  who  are  greedy  of  influence,  and 
who  are  always  ready  to  sacrifice  the  interests  of  the  non- 
German  races  to  their  own  selfishness.  This  minority  has 
made  terms  with  the  Hungarians  because  it  despaired  of  ever 
being  able  to  absorb  them.  It  would  be  feeble  enough  if  it 
were  left  to  itself,   but  the  connection,  intellectual,  political. 


Sg6  HISTORY  OF  A  US  TRO- HUNGARY. 

and  social,  which  it  carefully  keeps  up  with  Greater  Germany, 
still  gives  it  a  certain  amount  of  vigour. 

We  can  say  nothing  of  the  state  of  "Austrian  civilization," 
owing  to  the  composite  character  of  the  monarchy.  The  only 
unity  possible  to  the  various  parts  of  the  State  in  their  general 
condition  is  that  of  economic  situation,  and  even  here  w^e 
cannot  describe  it  as  especially  Austrian,  since  it  is  common 
to  Austria  with  many  other  countries,  and  many  of  the  manu- 
factures and  railroads  have,  in  fact,  been  set  on  foot  by 
foreigners. 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  for  the  last  thirty  years  the 
central  government  have  neglected  nothing  which  could  raise 
the  several  states  to  the  highest  pitch  of  economical  prosperity. 
Numerous  lines  of  railway  have  placed  Vienna,  Pesth,  and 
Prague  in  communication  with  the  most  distant  spots  in  the 
empire.  Treaties  of  commerce  and  navigation  have  been 
concluded  with  France,  England,  and  Russia,  and  international 
exhibitions  have  given  evidence  of  the  progress  of  industry. 
The  one  which  was  held  at  Vienna  in  1873  was  one  of  the 
most  interesting  of  our  time.  It  coincided,  unfortunately,  with 
a  great  financial  disaster,  a  crash  by  which  public  credit  was 
considerably  shaken.  Out  of  one  hundred  and  forty-seven 
joint-stock  banks,  ninety-six  failed  in  less  than  three  years.  As 
we  have  already  said,  Vienna  had  become  since  181 5  a  city  of 
banks  and  speculation.  The  institution  of  the  lottery  had 
encouraged  a  taste  for  stock-jobbing  and  speculation  of  all 
kinds  among  its  inhabitants. 

Strangers  who  have  visited  the  capital  both  before  and 
since  this  time  have  been  able,  to  give  evidence  of  the  many 
improvements  which  have  been  made  in  late  years.  The  old 
fortifications  have  been  destroyed,  wide  boulevards  and  squares 
have  been  constructed,  and  it  has  become  one  of  the  finest 
cities  in  Europe.  Its  example  has  been  followed  by  Prague 
and  Pesth.  The  courses  of  the  Danube  and  of  the  Tisza 
(Theiss)  have  been  regulated.  The  Austrian  navy  had  been 
greatly  improved  under  the  influence  of  the  archduke  Maximilian 


PROGRESS  OF  EDUCATION.  597 

and  admiral  Tegethoff,  and  obtained,  to  the  surprise  of  the 
whole  of  Europe,  an  unexpected  success  at  Lissa/  It  has 
since  undertaken  several  scientific  explorations,  among  which 
the  expedition  of  the  frigate  Novara  deserves  especial  men- 
tion. It  was  carried  out  under  the  auspices  of  the  arch- 
duke Maximilian  and  the  command  of  Captain  Wullersdorft 
the  Novara  visited  many  ports  both  in  the  New  and  Old 
Worlds,  and  collected  much  valuable  material  for  the  study  of 
natural  science.  The  steamship  Tegethoff  also  made  an 
expedition  to  the  North  Pole,  under  Messrs.  Payer  and  Wey- 
precht,  which  was  watched  with  interest  by  the  whole  of 
Europe.  It  left  in  June,  1872,  and  did  not  return  till  October, 
1874,  during  which  time  it  made  its  way  to  latitude  82°  5',  to 
the  north  of  Nova  Zembla  and  Spitzbergen,  to  lands  whose 
existence  had  not  before  been  known.  Here  it  spent  two 
winters  in  the  ice.  The  brave  sailors  had  been  given  up  for 
lost,  and  on  their  return  were  received  with  enthusiastic  marks 
of  welcome  by  their  countrymen. 

When  once  the  schools  were  withdrawn  from  clerical  con- 
trol, and  education  was  carried  on  according  to  liberal  ideas, 
public  instruction  made  rapid  progress;  but  not  so  rapid, 
however,  as  would  have  been  the  case  had  the  various  national 
tongues  not  had  to  contend  against  German  and  Italian,  which 
had  a  constant  tendency  to  supplant  them.  Two  universities 
were  founded — that  of  Zagreb  (Agram)  for  the  southern  Slavs, 
and  that  of  Czernowitz,  which  dates  its  creation  from  the 
centenary  of  the  annexation  of  Bukovina  (1875).  From  this 
time  all  the  sciences  have  been  taught  both  in  Croatia  and 
Hungary  in  the  national  languages.  Bukovina,  less  fortunate, 
has  had  a  German  university  bestowed  upon  it,  which  now 
forms  the  last  landmark  of  German  civilization  on  the  borders 
of  Russia.  Two  academies  have  also  been  founded,  one  at 
Zagreb,  which  place  becomes  more  and  more  the  Athens  of 
Jugo  Slavonia,  and  the  other  at  Cracow.  The  latter  owes  its 
existence  to  the  efforts  of  the  minister  Jirecek,  and  has  become 
■  See  p.  570. 


598  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  great  centre  of  literature  and  science  among  the  Poles. 
The  Faculty  of  Protestant  Theology,  the  Fine  Arts  Academy, 
and  the  Polytechnic  Institution  of  Vienna  have  all  been  reorgan- 
ized, and  treaties  concerning  copyrights  have  been  signed  with 
other  countries. 

If  Austria  were  made  up  of  one  nation  only,  all  speaking 
the  same  language,  this  would  be  a  fitting  opportunity  in  which 
to  say  a  few  words  about  the  actual  state  of  its  literature ;  but  the 
whole  of  our  history  of  the  empire  serves  to  show  that  there 
can  be  no  "Austrian  "  literature.  The  various  languages  have 
made  unequal  progress  and  manifested  their  genius  in  widely 
different  ways.  The  German  literature  which  flourishes  at 
Vienna,  Prague,  and  Pesth,  is  simply  an  offshoot  or  reflection 
of  that  of  Germany.  The  Hungarian  literature,  which  has  its 
home  at  Pesth,  is  an  original  production  of  the  Magyar  soil  and 
the  Magyar  turn  of  mind.  The  various  Slavonic  literatures,  in 
spite  of  their  common  origin,  are  far  from  following  the  same 
lines.  They  have  but  few  points  of  contact,  and,  as  a  rule,  take 
very  different  paths.  The  Poles  and  Ruthenians  of  Galicia 
hold  extremely  divergent,  and  often  even  opposite,  opinions. 
The  Chekhs,  whose  intellectual  superiority  is  incontestable, 
have  not  been  able  to  impose  their  language  on  the  Slovaks, 
and  they  on  their  part  have  a  hard  struggle  to  hold  their  own 
against  the  Magyars.  The  Croats  try  to  make  friends  with  both 
the  Catholic  Slovenians,  and  the  Orthodox  Servians.  In  the 
Slav  town  of  Livow  (Lemberg) ;  in  Cracow,  among  the  Poles 
and  Ruthenians ;  in  Prague  and  Brno  (Briinn),  among  the 
Chekhs  and  Moravians ;  Ljublanja  (Laybach),  among  the 
Slovenians ;  Zagreb  and  Ragusa,  among  the  Croats ;  and  Novi 
Szad  (Neusatz),  among  the  Servians  of  Hungary,  we  find  the 
most  active  intellectual  life.  We  have  already  pointed  out 
how  much  the  destinies  of  the  various  nations  have  been 
influenced  by  the  development  of  their  literature,  and  we  have 
no  space  in  which  to  enumerate  even  the  principal  names  of 
authors  and  their  works. 

During  the  second  half  of  the  reign   of  Francis  Joseph, 


PROGRESS  OF  LIBERAL  IDEAS.  599 

Austria  has  entirely  abandoned  the  old  absolutist  principles  of 
Ferdinand  IV.  and  Francis  II.,  and  has  taken  her  place  among 
the  liberal  states  of  Europe.  But,  at  the  same  time,  it  must 
never  be  forgotten  that  a  large  number  of  Austrian  subjects 
have  been  deprived,  by  an  electoral  system  whose  mechanism 
we  have  already  described,  of  the  rights  which  seem  to  belong 
to  them  by  virtue  of  the  constitutional  laws.  Austria  has  pro- 
claimed the  liberty  of  the  individual  as  a  citizen,  but  not  as 
a  member  of  a  particular  nation  or  race.  The  nobles  have 
lost  their  old  privilege  of  freedom  from  military  service ;  the 
peasant  has  ceased  to  be  subject  to  the  lord ;  trials  are  all  oral 
and  public;  the  penal  code  has  been  modified;  trial  by  jury 
instituted  ;  corporal  punishment  in  the  army  and  in  the  prisons 
abolished  ;  Jews  have  been  placed  on  an  equality  with  other 
citizens,  though  usury  has  been  restrained ;  and  the  military 
frontier  has  been  deprived  of  its  special  government. 

The  constitution  of  December,  1867,  in  spite  of  all  its 
defects,  has  brought  with  it  a  large  number  of  liberal  laws 
concerning  the  general  rights  of  individuals,  as,  for  example, 
those  of  individual  liberty,  the  inviolability  of  the  household, 
the  right  of  association  and  public  meeting,  civil  marriages, 
concerning  also  the  relations  between  the  Church  and  public 
education,  and  of  the  various  religious  sects  among  themselves. 
The  Austria  of  the  days  of  Francis  II.  and  Metternich  has 
passed  away ;  but  it  certainly  cannot  be  said  that  the  present 
Austria  is  a  really  liberal  empire.  Until  she  has  found  out 
some  means  of  granting  the  free  use  of  the  same  rights  to  all 
her  people,  and  has  contrived  to  harmonize  them  in  a  well- 
balanced  state,  Austro-Hungary  must  remain  a  provisional 
state,  and  must  possess  a  negative  rather  than  positive  influence 
on  the  affairs  of  Europe. 


600  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  Eastern  Question  reopened — Uncertain  Policy  of  Austria 
(1874-1878). 

The  weakness  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  has  been 
shown  more  than  once  during  recent  events  in  the  East.  In 
1874,  an  insurrection  broke  out  among  the  Slavonic  populations 
of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  belonging  to  the  Servian  and 
Croat  stocks,  the  causes  of  which  need  only  be  sought  in  the 
bad  government  of  the  Turks.  Austria,  instead  of  boldly 
taking  the  part  of  the  Christians  and  acting  as  their  deliverer, 
was  rendered  quite  helpless  by  her  internal  divisions  and  the 
pressure  put  upon  her  by  her  powerful  neighbours,  Russia  and 
Prussia.  The  Triple  Alliance,  which  was  begun  at  the  time  of 
the  first  partition  of  Poland,  had  been  renewed.  In  1872, 
the  three  emperors  had  met  at  Berlin,  and  since  that  time  the 
Oriental  policy  of  the  three  cabinets  remained  more  or  less 
identical,  Russia  being  the  most  important  member  of  the 
alliance,  and  Austria  the  least  important. 

In  1874,  the  Austrian  ministers,  after  direct  negociation 
with  Roumania,  concluded  a  treaty  of  commerce  with  that 
state  and  an  agreement  relative  to  railroads.  On  the  Porte 
protesting  against  this  as  a  violation  of  its  sovereign  rights,  the 
three  governments  of  Austria,  Russia,  and  Prussia  agreed  to 
disregard  its  remonstrances.  "  There  will  come  a  time,"  ex- 
claimed Aarifi  Pacha,  "  when  it  will  become  impossible  for  the 
will  of  man  to  restrain  the  torrent  which  a  long  series  of 
broken  treaties  will  let  loose  !  " 

From  its  very  beginning  the  insurrection  in  Bosnia  and 
Herzegovina  caused  serious  difficulties  to  Austria.  She  had 
to  contend  with  the  ill-will  of  the  Magyars  and  the  restless 
jealousy  of  her  allies.  Hungary  thought  the  Slavs  already 
too  numerous  in  the  empire,  and  had  no  wish  to  see  their 
numbers  increased  by  the  annexation  of  territory  ;  they  are 
always  in  dread  of  being  overwhelmed  by  the  Slavonic  majority. 
It  was  the  interest  of  Russia  and  Prussia  not  to  allow  their  ally 
to  enlarge  her  borders  or  increase  her  armies  out  of  the  war- 


EASTERN  QUESTION  REOPENED.  60I 

like  inhabitants  of  new  districts.     The  policy  of  Austria  after 
1874  was  most  contradictory.     At  times  she  allowed  the  Turks 
to  violate  her  territory  and  ravage  the  borders  of  Croatia  with 
impunity;  at  times  she  forbade  them  to  disembark  arms  and 
troops  on  their  own  territory  at  Klek.     Her  ambassador  at 
Constantinople,  in  concert  with  General  Ignatiev,  obtained  the 
promise  of  the  Porte  to  carry  out  those  famous  reforms  which 
she  is  always  promising  and  never  granting.     The  diplomatists 
who  reconmiended  them  knew  perfectly  well  they  could  never 
be  carried  out.     Count  Andrassy's  note  of  January,  1876,  did 
but  formulate  the  wishes  of  the  whole  of  civilized  Europe,  yet 
the  conference  held  at  Constantinople  in  December  of  the 
same  year  only  served  to  show  the  powerlessness  of  diplomacy 
and  the  incorrigible  obstinacy  of  the  Porte.    It  became  evident 
that  the  sword  alone  could  cut  through  the  difficulty ;  but  the 
declaration  of  war  against  Turkey  on  the  part  of  Servia  and 
Montenegro  only  increased  the  difficulties  of  Austria.     The 
Slavs  called  upon  the  empire  to  take  part  in  the  struggle, 
and  followed  with  feverish  interest  the  various  phases  of  the 
heroic  but  fatally  unequal  struggle.     The  Hungarians  on  their 
side  lost  no  opportunity  of  showing  their  hatred  to  the  Servians 
and  their  sympathy  for  Turkey.     When  Abdul  Kerim  Pacha 
won  the  battle  of  Djunis  over  the  Servians,  a  subscription  was 
raised  in  Pesth   to  present  to  him  a   sword    of  honour.     A 
Magyar   deputation   was   sent   to    the    softas   or   Mussulman 
students  of  Constantinople,  to  express  the  enthusiastic  friend- 
ship of  Hungary ;  and  General  Klapka,  the  old  defender  of 
Komarom,  who  had  once  offered  his  sword  to  Prussia  against 
Austria,  now  placed  his  military  experience  at  the  service  of  the 
Porte,     Soon  after  the  softas  came  to  Pesth  to  return  the  visit 
of  their  Magyar  brothers,  and  the  sultan,  as  a  testimony  of  his 
gratitude  to  the  Hungarians,  sent  back  to  the  emperor  king 
some  remains  of  the  great  library  of  ]\ISS.  which  had  been 
formed  by  Matthias  Corvinus,  and  had  been  pillaged  by  the 
Turks.^     These  indications  of  feeling,  slight  enough  in  them- 
'  See  p.  243. 


602  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

selves,  showed  what  were  the  feehngs  of  the  Hungarians  to- 
wards Russia,  and  that  the  Magyars  could  not  forgive  Nicholas 
for  the  part  he  had  taken  in  1849.  They  also  deeply  offended 
the  Slavs,  who  identified  their  cause  with  that  of  the  Servians 
and  Bulgarians.  Some  counter-manifestations  took  place  at 
Prague  in  honour  of  the  Russian  general  Tcherniaiev,  but 
these  were  rigorously  suppressed  by  the  Austrian  police. 

At  Pesth  M.  Andrassy  was  unable  to  restrain  his  violent 
fellow-countrymen,  or  make  them  understand  that  public 
demonstrations  would  not  influence  the  foreign  policy  of  the 
empire.  He  could  not  control  the  popular  excitement,  and 
even  encouraged  it  by  his  own  action.  He  caused  the  Servian 
Stratimirovic,  one  of  the  heroes  of  1848,  who  had  offered  his 
sword  to  Prince  Milan  Obrenovic,  to  be  arrested ;  and  he  had 
the  journalist  deputy,  Miletic,  thrown  into  prison  on  the 
charge  of  having  wished  success  to  his  fellow-countrymen,  and 
of  having  negociated  a  loan  for  their  cause.  In  order  to  justify 
these  extraordinary  acts,  old  laws  were  appealed  to  which 
pronounce  all  those  who  shall  supply  arms  to  Turks  or  other 
infidels  guilty  of  high  treason  ! 

And  thus  the  monarchy,  divided  against  itself,  was  forced 
to  follow  the  lead  of  its  two  powerful  allies,  and,  notwith- 
standing the  enthusiasm  of  the  Slavs  and  the  indignation  of 
the  Magyars,  had  to  be  the  passive  observer  of  the  triumph 
of  Russia,  who,  after  the  fall  of  Plevna,  marched  with  her 
victorious  troops  to  the  very  gates  of  Constantinople.  The 
treaty  of  San  Stefano,  which  was  afterwards  modified  by  the 
congress  of  Berlin,  proclaimed  the  independence  of  Roumania, 
Servia,  and  Montenegro,  and  increased  their  territory,  while 
Bulgaria  was  made  an  independent  principality,  under  the 
nominal  suzerainty  of  the  sultan,  but  under  the  actual  control 
of  Russia. 


CHAPTER   XXXVII. 

AUSTRO-HUNGARY    FROM    1878    TO    1S89. 

The  Occupation  of  Bosnia. 

In  consequence  of  arrangements  which  had  been  secretly 
entered  into  before  the  war,  Austria  was  to  receive  some 
compensation  for  her  accommodating  neutraUty,  and  this 
compensation  took  the  form  of  that  article  in  the  treaty  of 
Berlin  (July  13,  1878)  which  called  upon  her  to  occupy  the 
provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  "to  restore  order  in 
them."  These  were  the  provinces  which  had  given  the  signal 
for  the  insurrection  throughout  the  whole  Balkan  peninsula 
which  had  provoked  the  interference  of  Russia.  They  may 
have  hoped  that  if  they  could  only  beat  the  Turks,  they  might 
become,  like  Bulgaria,  an  independent  principality,  or  else 
might  be  allowed  to  form  part  of  the  neighbouring  state  of 
Servia  or  of  Montenegro,  either  of  which  was  so  closely  allied 
to  them  by  race.  They  were  little  aware  of  the  fate  that 
awaited  them.  The  preliminary  treaty  of  San  Stefano,  which 
was  signed  on  the  3rd  of  March,  1878,  by  Russia  and  Servia, 
had  merely  declared  that  to  them  should  be  applied  "  the 
ameliorations  proposed  by  the  conference  of  Constantinople, 
with  such  modifications  as  should  be  unanimously  agreed 
upon  by  the  Porte,  Russia,  and  Austro-Hungary."  The  treaty 
of  Berlin,  which  was  signed  in  the  July  following  by  the 
representatives  of  all  the  great  powers  united  in  congress, 
decided  the  matter  very  differently. 


604  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

"The  provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,"  says  Article 
Twenty-nine,  "shall  be  occupied  and  governed  by  Austro- 
Hungary.  The  Austrian  government,  not  wishing  to  under- 
take the  administration  of  the  sandjak  of  Novibazar,  which 
extends  between  Servia  and  Montenegro  to  the  south-east, 
as  far  as  Mitrovitza,  the  administration  shall  there  remain  in 
the  hands  of  the  Turkish  government.  Nevertheless,  in  order 
that  the  new  political  situation  may  be  maintained,  and  that 
the  means  of  communication  may  be  free  and  safe,  Austro- 
Hungary  reserves  the  right  of  keeping  garrisons,  and  of  having 
military  and  commercial  roads  in  all  this  portion  of  the  old 
vilayet  of  Bosnia." 

This  last  clause  is  of  great  importance.  The  sandjak  of 
Novibazar  is  that  portion  of  Bosnia  which  separates  Servia 
from  the  principality  of  Montenegro.  It  was  very  strongly 
the  interest  of  the  government  at  Vienna  to  isolate  the  two 
Servian  principalities  whose  territory  had  been  increased  by 
the  treaty  of  Berlin,  and  who  might  at  any  moment  become 
desirous  of  joining  forces  against  the  Turks.  In  consequence 
of  this  clause,  any  such  common  action,  whether  against  Turkey 
or  Austro-Hungary  itself,  became  impossible.  Austro-Hungary 
held  I\Iontenegro  by  her  command  of  the  gulf  of  Cattaro,  and 
Servia  by  the  Danube ;  her  occupation  of  Bosnia  and  Herze- 
govina quite  put  an  end  to  the  hopes  of  those  Servian  or 
Montenegrin  patriots  who  had  hoped  to  see  a  Slav  monarch 
on  the  throne  of  the  Czar  Douchan.  Had  they  succeeded  in 
forming  such  an  empire  it  must  have  become  the  centre  of 
attraction  to  the  Slav  provinces  of  Dalmatia  and  Croatia,  as 
well  as  to  the  Servians  of  Novi-Szad  and  Temesvar.  Austria 
thus  averted  a  serious  danger  by  stifling  in  their  germ  these 
hopes  of  the  Servian  patriots;  but  a  feeling  of  deep  disap- 
pointment was  produced  in  Belgrade  and  Zettinje,  Many 
patriots  would  have  willingly  sacrificed  all  the  advantages 
accorded  to  the  two  principalities  by  the  treaty  of  Berlin,  if 
only  they  could  have  seen  the  statu  quo  a?ite  belluvi  re- 
established in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  in  all  its  integrity.     As 


EFFECT  OF  THE    TREATY  OF  BERLIN.  605 

for  the  two  provinces  still  remaining  to  Turkey,  the  maxim 
adversus  hostein  ceterna  auctoritas  would  always  have  been 
true  ;  pretexts  would  never  have  been  wanting  to  the  Ser- 
vians and  Montenegrins  to  justify  intervention  on  their  parts 
for  the  deliverance  of  their  Slav  brethren ;  but  all  such  oppor- 
tunities passed  away  the  moment  Austria  undertook  to  intro- 
duce the  principles  of  religious  tolerance,  of  equality  of  race, 
and  an  European  administration  of  affairs. 

Leaving  on  one  side  the  interests  of  Servia,  Montenegro, 
and,  perhaps,  those  of  the  Bosnians  and  Herzegovinians 
themselves,  this  clause  in  the  treaty  of  Berlin  might  have 
consequences  of  the  gravest  import  to  the  whole  Balkan 
peninsula  and  the  peace  of  Europe.  Up  to  that  moment  no 
foreign  power  had  inherited  the  spoils  of  Turkey  —  at  any 
rate  in  Europe.  The  revolutions  of  Servia,  of  Greece, 
Roumania,  and  Bulgaria,  had  profited  none  but  the  Servians, 
the  Greeks,  Roumanians,  and  Bulgarians.  Russia,  after 
having  reached  the  very  gates  of  Constantinople,  had  retired 
with  praiseworthy  disinterestedness,  and  in  exchange  for  all 
her  sacrifices  had  obtained  nothing  but  a  few  remote  and 
unimportant  advantages.  But  a  new  principle  was  now 
proclaimed  by  Europe,  namely,  that  the  provinces  of  the 
Ottoman  empire  might  at  any  moment  be  claimed  by  the 
various  European  powers.  If  Austria  established  herself 
in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  why  should  not  Italy  seek  to 
do  the  same  in  Albania,  Russia  in  the  territory  immediately 
below  the  Balkans,  and  England  in  Constantinople  1 — a  grave 
problem,  which  is  not  yet  solved,  but  which  will  certainly  force 
itself  into  prominence  some  day  with  serious  risk  to  the  cause 
of  justice  and  of  peace.  The  only  equitable  solution  of  the 
Eastern  question  is  that  which  assures  to  each  and  every  of 
the  peoples,  so  recently  under  the  dominion  of  the  Turk,  the 
peaceable  and  complete  possession  of  that  soil  which  is  theirs 
by  every  right  conferred  by  history  or  race. 

Moreover,  Article  Twenty-nine  of  the  treaty  of  Berlin 
raises  further  apprehensions  of  disturbance.     When  we  find 


6o6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Austro-Hungary  established  in  the  sandjak  of  Novibazar,  at 
the  head  of  the  railway  and  the  military  road  which  run 
from  Mitrovitza  to  Salonica  by  the  valley  of  the  Vardar,  we 
cannot  help  fearing  that  Viennese  statesmen  dream  of  some 
day  seizing  this  highway,  and  so  securing  most  valuable  outlets 
into  the  Egean  Sea  and  the  East.^  But  the  forcible  possession 
of  Salonica  could  not  be  effected  without  seriously  disturbing 
the  equilibrium  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and,  as  a  natural 
consequence,  of  the  peace  of  Europe. 

The  moment  Austria  was  in  possession  of  the  mandate, 
confided  to  it  by  the  congress  of  Berlin,  the  government  began 
to  put  it  into  execution.  On  the  31st  of  July  and  the  ist 
of  August,  1878,  the  troops,  commanded  by  field-marshal 
Joseph  Filipovic,  crossed  the  Save  and  entered  the  new  domain 
of  the  empire.  It  was  expected  that  the  occupation  would  be 
effected  without  striking  a  blow,  but  difficulties  wholly  unlooked 
for  were  encountered. 

The  Mahomedan  inhabitants  of  Bosnia,  who  joined  the 
aristocracy  of  the  country,  could  not  see  the  links  which 
bound  them  to  their  co-religionists  in  Constantinople  snapped 
asunder  without  regret ;  they  could  not  unconcernedly  watch 
the  reversal  of  a  state  of  things  by  which  they  had  profited 
for  centuries,  or  reform  abuses  to  which  they  owed  all 
their  prosperity.  The  Orthodox  Greeks  mourned  for  the  loss 
of  their  hopes  of  union  with  the  other  Servian  countries.  The 
Catholics  alone  could  feel  any  real  sympathy  with  the  Austrian 
occupation. 

In  order  to  take  complete  possession  of  the  two  provinces, 

one  entire  army  corps,  as  well  as  a  division  of  infantry,  were 

put   into   requisition.      The  Turkish    government    could    not 

officially  refuse  to  obey  the  commands  laid  upon  it  by  Europe, 

but  it  secretly  conveyed  arms,  ammunition,  and  food  to  the 

Mahomedans  in  the  two  provinces.     Several  companies  were 

*  It  has  been  not  unreasonably  supposed  that  Prussia  has  a  strong 
interest  in  forcing  Austria  towards  the  East,  partly  that  it  may  be  a  check 
on  Russia,  partly  that  so  the  German  elements  of  Cisleithania  may  be  the 
more  readily  detached  from  it  and  annexed  to  Germany. 


OCCUPATION  OF  BOSNIA.  607 

soon  organized  under  the  command  of  a  brave  and  fanatic 
chief,  Hadji  Loja,  every  strong  man  between  the  ages  of 
fifteen  and  seventy  being  enlisted.  A  revolution  broke  out 
at  Serajevo,  and  a  provisional  government  was  organized  for 
the  purpose  of  resisting  the  foreign  occupation,  with  Hadji 
Loja  for  its  head,  under  the  title  of  First  Patriot  of  the  land. 
The  Austrians  had  crossed  the  Save  without  meeting  with 
any  resistance,  but  as  soon  as  they  reached  the  first  mountain 
defiles  they  found  themselves  confronted  by  well-armed  troops, 
who  thoroughly  understood  how  to  profit  by  those  natural 
obstacles  with  which  the  country  abounds.  They  were  re- 
pulsed at  Maglaj,  and  again  at  Gradac.  They  soon  found  out 
that  they  had  before  them,  not  merely  a  few  hastily  impro- 
vised bodies  of  militia,  but  twenty-six  battalions  of  the  Turkish 
army,  provided  with  artillery,  and  that  it  was  no  mere  show 
of  military  strength  that  would  win  the  day.  The  inhabi- 
tants of  the  country  for  the  most  part  fled  from  the  towns, 
which  they  were  powerless  to  defend  against  the  cannon  of 
the  enemy,  and  took  shelter  among  the  natural  fastnesses, 
from  whence  they  were  able  to  inflict  considerable  losses  on 
the  army  of  occupation.  More  than  five  thousand  Austrians 
were  killed,  and  it  became  needful  to  send  for  reinforcements. 
It  was  the  19th  of  August  before  they  were  able  to  take 
Serajevo  ;  and  even  with  the  fall  of  the  capital  of  Bosnia, 
hostilities  did  not  cease,  for  war  was  still  carried  on  among  the 
mountains.  Herzegovina  was  not  completely  occupied  before 
the  end  of  September,  and  Bosnia  not  until  a  month  later, 
and  before  they  could  secure  possession  of  the  two  provinces, 
the  Austrians  had  been  obliged  to  bring  into  the  field  three 
entire  army  corps,  and  to  spend  sixty-two  millions  of  florins. 

The  occupation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  nothwith- 
standing  its  apparently  temporary  character,  is  evidently  re- 
garded as  a  definite  conquest  by  Austro- Hungary.  Though 
the  sultan  remains  the  nominal  sovereign  of  the  two  pro- 
vinces, yet  it  is  Austro-Hungary  who  administers  them,  and 
most  certainly  she  has  no  intention  of  abandoning  her  prize. 


6o8  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

Their  possession  opens  to  her,  as  we  before  had  occasion  to 
remark,  the  route  to  Salonica,  and  other  large  and  important 
outlets  for  her  commerce,  and  it  secures  safe  and  easy  com- 
munication between  Hungary  and  Dalmatia.  In  short,  this 
last  acquisition  is  ample  compensation  for  the  loss  of  Venice. 
The  two  provinces  together  measure  19,985  square  miles 
(23,877  with  the  addition  of  the  sandjak  of  Novibazar,  occupied 
but  not  governed  by  Austria).  They  contain  a  population  of 
about  1,400,000,  all  speaking  Servian  or  Croatian  dialects,  but 
divided  by  religion  into  three  groups — 500,000  Mahomedans, 
571,250  of  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church,  and  265,710  Catholics. 
The  various  religious  bodies  maintain  a  tolerably  even  balance 
of  power,  and  enable  Austria  to  act  on  her  favourite  maxim — 
divide  in  order  to  govern. 

Ready  instruments  have  been  found  among  the  Slav,  Chekh, 
Servian,  and,  above  all,  among  the  Croat  subjects  of  the  older 
Austrian  possessions,  to  carry  out  the  work  of  organization  in 
these  her  latest  acquisitions.  Clearly  the  new  province  does  not 
rightly  belong  either  to  Hungary  or  to  Cisleithania;  it  has  no 
claim  to  be  represented  either  in  the  parliament  of  Vienna  or 
in  that  of  Pesth ;  it  is  therefore  governed  in  the  name  of  the 
emperor-king  by  the  minister  of  finance  common  to  the  whole 
empire,  by  means  of  a  special  chancery.  We  shall  see  later  on 
how  this  administration  is  organized.  The  Mahomedans  have 
retained  their  peculiar  privileges  and  laws. 

In  the  year  1881,  the  Austro-Hungarian  government  intro- 
duced compulsory  military  service  into  the  two  provinces,  and 
this  innovation,  the  possibility  of  which  had  been  quite  over- 
looked by  the  treaty  of  Berlin,  provoked  an  ofificial  remon- 
strance on  the  part  of  Turkey,  and  occasioned  several  promptly 
suppressed  insurrections.  In  a  material  point  of  view  the 
country  has  made  great  progress  ;  railways  have  been  made 
between  Brod  and  Serajevo,  and  between  Mitrovitza,  Mostar, 
and  Serajevo.  This  last-named  town  tends  to  become  more 
and  more  European,  and  its  economic  conditions  have  been 
greatly  changed  for  the  better.     Nevertheless,  we  ask  ourselves 


CONSEQUENCES  OF  THE    OCCUPATION.  609 

whether  these  improvements  have  not  been  too  dearly  bought, 
and  whether  the  two  provinces  would  not  have  been  the  greater 
gainers  by  submitting  to  a  few  more  years  of  Ottoman  rule, 
which  might  have  been  followed  by  real  and  entire  inde- 
pendence. 

Political  Consequences  of  this  Occupation. 

Prior  to  the  treaty  of  Berlin  the  wishes  of  Servia  were  in  the 
direction  of  annexation  with  Bosnia,  while  those  of  Montenegro 
tended  towards  union  with  Herzegovina.  The  disappoint- 
ment of  their  hopes  deeply  angered  the  two  small  Servian 
states,  but  the  policy  each  has  since  pursued  has  been  widely 
different.  Montenegro  has  remained  faithful  to  Russia,  her 
natural  protectrix.  At  the  same  time  prince  Nicholas  has 
endeavoured  to  make  it  clear  to  the  other  states  that  it  is  his 
wish  to  preserve  an  attitude  of  absolute  religious  tolerance 
towards  all  his  subjects.  By  a  recently  concluded  agreement 
with  the  Holy  See,  he  has  established  a  Catholic  bishop  at 
Bari  (Antivari)  ;  he  has  done  more,  for  he  has  obtained  from 
Leo  Xni.  an  authorization  enabling  the  Catholics  of  the 
Montenegrin  states  to  celebrate  the  mass  henceforth  in  the 
Slavonic  tongue.  On  the  other  hand,  his  eldest  daughter  has 
married  a  prince  Karageorgevitch,  a  member  of  one  of  the  two 
royal  houses  who  contended  for  the  possession  of  Servia  for 
sixty  years,  and  who  at  one  time  laid  claim  to  the  throne. 
Montenegro,  small  as  it  is — for  it  cannot  number  more  than 
two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants — backed  by  Russia,  is  not 
incapable  of  inspiring  some  uneasiness  in  the  mind  of  the 
Austrian  government. 

It  seemed  as  if  Servia,  exasperated  by  the  loss  of  Herze- 
govina, would  also  throw  herself  into  the  arms  of  Russia,  and 
thus,  by  means  of  close  alliance  with  that  power,  in  conjunction 
with  Montenegro,  Bulgaria,  and  Greece,  obtain  sufficient 
influence  to  be  able  to  insist  on  an  addition  to  the  pitiful 
concessions  made  to  her  by  the  treaty  of  Berlin.  Backed  by 
such  allies,   Servia  would  have  succeeded  in  making  herself 

2    R 


6lO  HISTORY  OF  A USTRO- HUNGARY. 

sufficiently  dangerous  to  the  Austrian  interests  in  the  peninsula. 
Austria,  however,  hastened  to  recognize  the  title  of  king 
assumed  by  prince  Milan  towards  the  end  of  1882,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  its  policy  was  directed  towards  detaching 
the  newly-created  kingdom  from  the  small  neighbouring  states, 
as  well  as  from  any  alliance  with  Russia.  This  was  all  the 
easier  to  do  because  the  feelings  of  the  Servian  nation  were 
deeply  wounded  by  certain  declarations  of  the  late  emperor 
Alexander  II.  In  order  to  fulfil  the  obligation  laid  on  her  by 
the  treaty  of  Berlin,  Servia  was  forced  to  have  recourse  to 
foreign  capital  to  enable  her  to  construct  the  stipulated  line 
of  railway  from  Belgrade  to  the  Bulgarian  and  Ottoman 
frontier.  She  found  ample  credit  at  Vienna,  but  this  placed 
her,  in  all  economical  matters,  completely  under  the  tutelage 
of  Austro-Hungary.  Gradually  this  tutelage  extended  to 
matters  of  policy,  and  during  the  years  that  have  elapsed 
between  1878  and  1889  the  kingdom  of  Servia  has  practically 
become  the  vassal  of  its  powerful  neighbour.  When,  at  the 
end  of  the  year  1885,  notwithstanding  the  treaty  of  Berlin, 
Roumelia  united  itself  to  Bulgaria,  Servia,  instead  of  following 
the  good  example  set  her  by  her  fellow  Slavs,  thought  it 
her  duty  to  take  part  against  them.  Under  the  pretence 
of  maintaining  the  equilibrium  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  king 
Milan  declared  war  against  the  Bulgarians,  and  announced 
his  intention  of  annexing  a  portion  of  their  territory.  For- 
tune, however,  deserted  him.  The  Austro-Hungarian  cabinet, 
which  was  certainly  answerable  for  his  interference  in  the 
quarrel,  could  not,  without  seriously  compromising  the  peace 
of  Europe,  take  up  arms  in  his  defence.  Yet,  though  it  was 
unable  to  go  so  far  as  this,  its  policy  was  made  sufficiently 
plain  by  the  imperious  manner  in  which  it  intervened  between 
the  belligerents.  At  the  very  moment  when  prince  Alexander 
of  Bulgaria,  already  master  of  Pirot,  was  preparing  to  march 
on  Nich,  and,  perhaps,  even  on  Belgrade  (November,  1885), 
the  Austrian  envoy  at  that  city  interposed,  and  conveyed  to 
him    an   injunction    to   cease   hostilities.      Prince    Alexander 


FRESENT  TRIPLE  ALLIANCE.  6ll 

obeyed,  and  Servia  was  saved.  It  is  very  possible  that  king 
Milan  might  have  been  completely  overthrown,  had  he  not 
been  well  protected  by  his  dangerous  ally. 

If  Austria  has  been  unable  to  prevent  Bulgaria  from 
enlarging  her  boundaries,  at  least  she  has  seen  with  satisfaction 
the  fall  of  prince  Alexander  of  Battenberg,  to  whose  daring 
and  bravery  the  new  state  owes  its  existence.  She  is  clearly 
more  in  sympathy  with  his  successor,  Ferdinand  of  Coburg, 
who  has  risked  the  experiment  of  going  to  Sofia,  and  who, 
looked  askance  at  by  Russia,  ought  plainly  to  seek  at  Vienna 
for  that  encouragement  which  is  refused  him  at  St.  Petersburg. 
Austria  has  over  and  over  again  declared  her  intention  of 
preventing  any  second  occupation  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  by 
a  Russian  army.  Her  foreign  policy  ever  since  her  own 
occupation  of  Bosnia  has  been  resolutely  in  favour  of  peace. 
The  only  act  of  a  warlike  character  in  her  recent  history  has 
been  the  naval  demonstration  before  Dulcigno,  when  the 
Austrian  fleet  united  with  those  of  the  other  great  powers  in 
compelling  Turkey  to  surrender  the  town  to  the  Montenegrins. 

By  a  secret  treaty,  concluded  in  1879,  and  published  at  the 
beginning  of  the  year  1888,  at  a  time  when  Russia  seemed  to 
be  assuming  a  threatening  position,  Austria  and  Prussia  have 
agreed  to  maintain  the  state  of  things  created  by  the  treaty 
of  Berlin,  and  to  aid  each  other  in  case  of  attack  on  either  by 
Russia.  Italy  has  since  joined  the  two  great  central  powers  of 
Europe.  The  object  of  this  triple  alliance  is,  to  all  appear- 
ances, the  maintenance  of  peace  throughout  the  continent ;  it 
has  certainly  contributed  to  affirm  the  hegemony  of  Germany. 

In  1886,  both  parts  of  the  monarchy  gave  their  assent  to  a 
law  with  regard  to  the  organization  of  the  landsturfn,  which 
raised  the  number  of  the  soldiers  to  four  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand.  It  is  doubtful  whether  this  force  will  ever  be  directed 
against  Prussia.  Austria  appears  to  have  completely  forgotten 
Custozza  and  Sadowa,  and  has  behaved  towards  the  new 
German  empire  with  a  friendliness  which  has  sometimes 
astonished  the  rest  of  the  world. 


6l2  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUXGARY. 

The  Taaffe  Ministry  and  the  Policy  of  Conciliation  towards 
Bohemia. 

The  annexation  of  Bosnia  brought  about  the  fall  of  the 
Auersperg  ministry.  The  German  party,  of  which  he  was  the 
representative,  was  opposed  to  it,  while  the  federalists  and  the 
ultramontane  parties  highly  approved  of  it.  On  the  accession 
to  office  of  count  Taafe,  who  succeeded  Auersperg,  the  former 
announced  his  intention  of  treating  all  the  nationalities  with 
impartial  justice.  His  appointment  as  minister  was  a  great  blow 
to  the  so-called  constitutional  party,  whose  chiefs  were  Herbst 
and  Giskra,  and  whose  real  aim  was  the  maintenance  of 
the  German  influence  throughout  Cisleithania.  Count  Taaffe 
has  succeeded  in  persuading  the  Chekhs  to  take  part  in  the 
Austrian  Reichsrath,  a  task  which  had  been  beyond  the  power 
of  all  his  predecessors.  Declaring  that  they  did  not  intend 
to  sacrifice  the  principle  of  nationality,  and  did  not  renounce 
their  claims,  they  nevertheless  cordially  lent  their  aid  to  the 
new  cabinet,  and  count  Taaffe  made  M.  Prazak,  one  of  the 
Moravian  deputies  and  the  friend  of  all  the  political  leaders 
of  Bohemia,  one  of  his  ministers  without  portfolio.  Later 
on  M.  Prazak  became  minister  of  justice,  and  two  Galician 
Poles,  Ziemialkowski  and  Dunajewski,  were  made  members 
of  the  Cisleithanian  cabinet.  His  alliances  with  the  Chekhs 
and  Poles  secured  a  firm  majority  to  the  minister,  and  enabled 
him  to  overcome  the  resistance  of  the  German  so-called 
liberal  or  constitutional  party,  and  the  hostility  of  the  Vien- 
nese, which  at  times  makes  itself  felt  in  the  sittings  of  the 
Reichsrath. 

Though  the  coronation  of  the  sovereign  has  not  yet  been 
granted  to  Bohemia,  she  has,  at  any  rate,  received  a  national 
university.  This  institution  supplies  a  real  need,  and  already 
has  enrolled  more  than  two  thousand  students.  It  was  opened 
at  the  same  time  as  the  national  theatre  at  Prague,  which 
latter  building  had  been  raised  by  national  subscription,  and 
may  be  looked  upon  as  a  sign  of  the  triumph  of  Slavism  in 


POLICY  OF  CONCILIATION  TOWARDS  BOHEMIA.     613 

Bohemia.  Another  new  and  interesting  institution  is  the 
tnatice  skolska,  or  national  fund  for  schools,  whose  object  it  is 
to  provide  funds  to  enable  Chekh  schools  to  compete  with  the 
German  schools,  and  to  increase  the  means  of  education  in 
those  parts  of  the  country  where  they  are  still  insufficient. 
This  matice  skolska  is  to  the  Chekhs  what  the  Schulvereiii,  or 
School  Society,  is  to  the  German  patriots  of  Austria.  The 
latter  is  supported  also  by  subscriptions  from  Germany,  and 
its  aim  is  to  create  or  aid  German  schools  in  Slav  or  Magyar 
districts. 

Notwithstanding  the  resistance  of  the  German  party, 
count  Taaffe  has  been  able  to  proclaim  the  complete  equality 
of  the  Chekh  and  German  languages,  both  in  the  administra- 
tion and  in  courts  of  law.  The  lowering  of  the  amount  of 
taxes  which  must  be  paid  to  qualify  for  voting,  and  a  new 
division  of  the  electoral  districts,  have  at  last  secured  to  the 
Chekhs  that  majority  in  the  parliament  at  Prague  which  is 
their  due;  they  have  176  votes  to  75.  The  Germans  have 
ceased  since  1886  to  take  any  part  in  the  deliberations  of  this 
assembly.  They  demand  that  the  kingdom  of  Bohemia  shall 
be  subject  to  two  administrations,  the  one  German,  the  other 
Chekh  ;  a  dangerous  proposal,  if  it  were  possible,  as  it  would 
mark  out  beforehand  that  portion  which  might  become  part  of 
Germany,  in  case  of  any  future  annexation.  Wurmbrand,  one 
of  the  deputies,  also  endeavoured,  in  1884,  to  have  German 
proclaimed  by  the  Reichsrath  the  official  language  of  Cis- 
leithania.  He  did  not  succeed,  his  proposal  being  negatived 
by  186  votes  against  155.  In  the  elections  of  1885  the  German 
party  lost  fifteen  votes. 

On  the  whole,  the  Slavs  of  Bohemia  owe  a  certain  debt  of 
gratitude  to  the  Taafe  ministry,  as  it  has  endeavoured  as  far 
as  possible,  and  often  in  difficult  circumstances,  to  put  into 
practice  the  motto,  '■'■  Justitia  ergo  omnes  nationes  est  fimda- 
mentuin  AustriceJ"  It  is  strongly  the  interest  of  the  Chekhs 
to  be  patient,  and  up  to  the  present  time  their  deputies  seem 
to  be  willing  to  concentrate  their  energies  on  what  is  practi- 


6l4  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

cable,  and  to  content  themselves  with  whatever  concessions 
they  can  from  time  to  time  obtain  in  favour  of  their  language 
and  their  nationality.  They  are  divided  into  two  well-defined 
parties — that  of  the  young  Chekhs,  who  are  more  radical  and 
exacting  in  their  demands ;  and  that  of  the  old  Chekhs,  who 
are  moderate  in  their  wishes  and  more  inclined  to  wait  their 
opportunity,  seeking  support  at  need  from  the  nobles  and 
priests,  and  earnest  in  their  endeavours  to  live  peaceably  with 
all  men.  Both  parties  are  seeking  the  same  end  by  different 
means,  that  end  being  the  recognition  of  the  historical  rights 
and  autonomy  of  Bohemia,  and  neither  of  them  dreams  of 
severing  the  ties  which  bind  that  kingdom  to  the  rest  of  the 
Austro-Hungarian  state. 

Hungary. 

Notwithstanding  the  attacks  which  have  been  aimed  against 
the  dual  government  by  the  Slavs  and  Roumanians,  Hungary 
has  continued  to  enjoy  that  privileged  position  which  was 
bestowed  upon  her  by  the  Ausgleich  of  1867.  The  compact 
was  renewed  in  the  years  1877  and  1887,  only  one  important 
modification  being  agreed  upon.  The  military  frontiers,  no 
longer  necessary,  owing  to  the  enfeebled  condition  of  Turkey, 
have  been  placed  under  ordinary  civil  government.  When 
this  was  done  the  Magyars  agreed  to  pay  two  per  cent,  more 
to  the  budget  of  the  empire.  In  1867,  it  was  settled  they 
should  pay  thirty  per  cent.  ;  they  now  pay  thirty-two  per  cent. 
An  Hungarian,  count  Kalnoky,  has  been  the  Austrian  minister 
of  foreign  affairs  since  1881.  Tisza  has  continued  minister 
of  the  interior  ever  since  1875.  On  the  death  of  Deak,  in 
1876,  he  succeeded  in  forming  a  government  party  which  has 
assured  him  a  majority.  During  his  ministry  the  two  most  im- 
portant measures  passed  have  been  a  law  concerning  secondary 
schools  and  the  reformation  of  the  Chamber  of  Magnates. 
This  venerable  assembly,  which  has  at  certain  times  included 
as  many  as  eight  hundred  members,  has,  indeed,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  been  very  considerably  reduced. 


AfA  GYARIZA  TION.  6 1 5 

As  regards  Croatia  and  the  other  non-Magyar  races,  the 
work  of  Magyarization  has  been  carried  on  ceaselessly.  Every 
manifestation  of  national  life  among  the  Servians,  Slovaks, 
Roumanians,  Ruthenes,  and  Saxons  has  been  repressed,  and 
these  races  are  hardly  represented  at  all  in  the  parliaments 
at  Buda-Pesth.  In  order  to  diminish  the  number  of  the 
Slovaks  and  to  increase  that  of  the  Magyars  it  has  even  been 
proposed  to  carry  off  Slovak  orphans  and  bring  them  up  in 
purely  Hungarian  districts.  At  the  present  time  the  ban  who 
governs  at  Zagreb,  Kuhn  Hedervary,  calls  himself  the  huszar 
of  Tisza.  On  the  other  hand,  Hungary  has  herself  been 
unsuccessful  hitherto  in  her  repeated  endeavours  to  obtain 
a  national  army  distinct  from  that  of  Austria. 

While  strongly  opposed  to  all  Germanizing  influences  within 
their  kingdom,  the  Hungarians,  in  their  attitude  towards  foreign 
countries,  have  maintained  the  policy  by  virtue  of  which 
Austria  remains  attached  to  Germany.  In  1888,  Tisza  went 
so  far  as  to  pronounce  from  the  tribune  during  the  session 
words  which  he  knew  must  annoy  France,  and  which  never 
would  have  been  used  in  the  parliament  of  Vienna.  The 
incident  was,  at  any  rate,  of  use  in  proving  that  the  present 
representatives  of  the  nation  do  not  share  the  opinions  of  the 
revolutionists  of  1848.  On  the  2nd  of  December,  1888,  the 
emperor  Francis  Joseph  celebrated  the  fortieth  anniversary  of 
his  accession.  Of  a  truth,  Austro-Hungary  is  now  very  different 
from  what  she  was  when  the  poet  could  find  her  nowhere 
represented  except  in  the  camp  of  Radetsky.  Her  people  are 
at  peace,  her  credit  is  restored,  and  her  citizens  are  governed 
by  laws  which  secure  to  them  individual  liberty,  the  inviola- 
bility of  their  homes,  and  sound  relations  between  Church  and 
State.  The  Austria  of  Francis  I.  and  Metternich  is  no  more  ; 
but  at  the  same  time  she  is  surrounded  by  difficulties,  which 
have  not  been  lessened  by  the  abdication  of  king  Milan  and 
the  present  state  of  afifiiirs  in  Servia.  Incapable  of  an  inde- 
pendent policy  of  her  own,  she  is  at  the  mercy  of  formidable 
neighbours,  who  insist  on  her  alliance,  while  they  try  to  obtain 


6l6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

for  themselves  some  fragments  of  her  territory;  and  at  the 
present  time  we  may  end  our  labours  with  the  same  words 
which  closed  the  first  edition  of  our  history.  Unless  some 
unforeseen  event  occurs,  the  situation  of  the  Austrian  state 
must  remain  precarious,  and  its  future  inspire  with  grave 
anxiety  the  minds  of  those  who  consider  the  maintenance  of 
a  powerful  Danubian  State  necessary  to  the  peace  of  Europe. 

It  only  remains  for  us  to  draw  up  a  summary  of  the  organi- 
zation of  Austro-Hungary,  the  elements  of  which  it  is  composed, 
and  the  resources  which  are  at  its  command. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

ORGANIZATION    AND    STATISTICS    OF   AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Common  Affairs. 

We  have  already  explained  the  dual  organization  of  Austro- 
Hungary,  as  it  was  settled  in  1867,  and  the  formation  of  Cis- 
and  Trans-Leithania.  We  will  now  consider  how  this  com- 
plicated system  of  government  with  its  double  parliament 
works.  Emperor  at  Vienna,  the  monarch  is  only  apostolic 
king  at  Buda-Pesth ;  in  each  portion  of  his  dominions  he 
enjoys  the  ordinary  privileges  of  crowned  heads,  inviolability, 
the  right  to  make  peace  and  war,  and  the  right  of  pardon.  On 
his  accession  he  swears  that  he  will  respect  the  constitution,  in 
Vienna  before  the  two  chambers,  at  Buda-Pesth  at  the  time 
of  his  coronation.  In  all  matters  of  common  concern  the  legis- 
lative powers  belong  to  the  representative  assemblies  of  the  two 
portions  of  the  empire,  and  are  exercised  through  Delegations, 
who  are  nominated  each  year  and  meet  together  alternately 
at  Vienna  and  Buda-Pesth.  Each  part  of  the  empire  delegates 
its  authority  to  sixty  members.^  In  Cisleithania  these  sixty 
are  made  up  of  twenty  from  the  chamber  of  the  lords,  and 
forty  from  the  Reichsrath^  of  whom  ten  represent  Bohemia, 
seven  Galicia,  four  Moravia,  and  the  rest  the  other  provinces. 
In  Transleithania  also  twenty  are  taken  from  the  chamber  of 
magnates  and  forty  from  that  of  the  deputies. 

'  See  Government  Year  Book  for  1888,  by  Lewis  Sergeant,  pp. 
362-380  :  Fisher  Unwin  ;  also  England's  Case  against  Home  Rule,  2nd 
edition,  pp.  58-65  :  A.  V.  Dicey :  Murray 


6l8  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

The  two  representative  bodies  meet,  as  we  have  said, 
alternately  at  Vienna  and  at  Buda-Pesth,  and  deliberate  by 
correspondence ;  if  they  cannot  come  to  an  agreement  after 
the  interchange  of  three  messages,  they  then  meet  in  full 
conclave  and  vote  without  further  debate.  Besides  those 
matters  which  are  called  common  affairs,  there  are  certain 
other  questions,  such  as  laws  concerning  customs,  coinage, 
railways,  and  military  contingents,  which  require  that  a 
preliminary  understanding  shall  have  been  arrived  at  by  the 
two  portions  of  the  empire.  In  such  cases  the  two  cabinets, 
at  the  suggestion  of  the  common  ministry,  propose  similar  laws 
to  the  parliaments  of  Vienna  and  Buda-Pesth,  and  these  bodies 
record  their  votes ;  or  else  two  commissions  are  appointed  to 
draw  up  the  laws  required.  The  Delegations  have  the  right 
to  demand  explanations  from  the  common  ministry  and  to 
call  them  to  account.  When  met  in  full  conclave,  the  sessions 
are  presided  over  alternately  by  the  one  or  the  other  president. 
The  Viennese  Court  of  Accounts  examines  into  the  expenses 
of  the  common  budget. 

Organization  of  Cisleithania. 

In  official  language  the  Cisleithanian  group  is  sometimes 
called  the  group  of  states  or  provinces  "  represented  in  the 
Reichsrath"  while  the  Hungarians  are  contented  to  be  known 
as  "  the  other  countries  belonging  to  his  majesty."  The  bases 
of  the  constitution  are  the  two  patents  of  October,  i860,  and 
February,  1861  (see  Chapter  XXXIV,),  and  various  laws  relating 
to  the  national  representation.  Cisleithania  is  a  representative 
state,  the  Reichsj-ath,  or  Council  of  the  Empire,  being  the  organ 
of  national  representation.  It  is  divided  into  two  chambers, 
the  house  of  lords  {Herrenhaus)  and  the  house  of  deputies 
{Abgeord7ietenhaus).  The  house  of  lords  is  formed  of  the 
princes  of  the  imperial  family  who  are  of  age,  and  the  members 
of  those  great  families  on  whom  the  sovereign  has  conferred 
hereditary  peerage,  nine  archbishops,  seven  bishops,  and  certain 
persons  nominated  for  life  by  the  emperor.     The  number  of 


THE   REICirSRATir.  619 

members  is  not  limited,  the  emperor  having  power  to  add  to 
it  at  will.  It  contains  at  present  one  hundred  and  ninety 
members.  According  to  a  law  passed  on  April  2,  1873,  the 
house  of  deputies  is  composed  of  three  hundred  and  fifty- 
three  deputies,  who  are  chosen  for  six  years.  These  are  elected, 
not  by  universal  suffrage,  which  does  not  exist  in  Austria,  but 
by  various  electoral  bodies,  large  landowners,  towns,  villages, 
and  rural  parishes,  and  the  system  works  in  favour  of  the  towns 
where  the  German  element  prevails,  and  against  the  rural 
districts  where  it  does  not.  This  chamber  of  deputies  at 
Vienna  can  by  no  means  be  looked  upon  as  fairly  representative 
of  the  country.  In  1885,  out  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-three 
members,  one  hundred  and  ninety-four  were  German,  twelve 
Italian,  three  Roumanian,  and  only  one  hundred  and  forty-four 
Slav;  these  Slavs  were  fifty-eight  Chekhs  from  Bohemia  and 
Moravia,  sixty-five  Poles,  three  Ruthenians,  nine  Slovenians, 
and  fourteen  Dalmatians  ;  a  curious  proportion,  if  we  remember 
that  in  Cisleithania  the  Slavs  are  at  least  twice  as  many  as  the 
Germans.  In  the  electoral  bodies  which  fall  within  the  first 
three  classes,  the  bodies,  namely,  of  the  large  landowners,  of 
towns,  and  of  chambers  of  commerce,  elections  are  direct ;  in 
the  rural  district  they  are  indirect. 

The  Reichsrath  meets  every  year  ;  in  the  house  of  lords  the 
president  and  vice  president  are  elected  by  the  emperor,  in 
the  lower  house  they  are  chosen  by  the  members.  The  two 
chambers  have  control  over  all  matters  common  to  the  various 
countries  which  are  represented  in  them,  with  the  exception  of 
those  which  are  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  delegations.  All 
other  questions  are  left  to  the  provincial  assemblies.  Cis- 
leithania is  not,  like  France  and  Italy,  a  uniform,  centralized 
state  divided  into  departments  ;  it  is  made  up  of  many  countries, 
each  of  which  has  its  separate  historic  traditions  and  provincial 
institutions.  Each  of  them,  except  Trieste,  where  the  muncipal 
council  holds  the  same  position,  possesses  a  provincial  diet. 
Some  of  these  diets,  such  as  those  of  Bohemia  and  Galicia,  are 
as  important  as  real    parliaments.      They  are  composed    of 


620  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARV. 

members  by  right  of  office,  and  members  chosen  for  six  3'ears 
by  the  electoral  bodies.  Archbishops,  bishops,  and  rectors  of 
universities  are  members  by  right  of  office,  and  in  Tyrol  to 
these  are  added  four  representatives  of  the  abbots  and  priors. 
The  president,  who  takes  the  title  of  the  marshal  of  the  land, 
and  the  vice-president  are  appointed  by  the  emperor,  while  the 
permanent  committee  {Latidesaiisclniss),  which  is  the  executive 
body,  is  elected  by  the  diet  from  among  its  own  members. 
In  some  of  the  countries  there  are,  besides,  councils  oi  circles 
which  somewhat  resemble  the  general  councils  of  France.  Each 
parish  has  a  municipal  council  and  elects  its  own  burgomaster. 
The  general  direction  of  affairs  in  Cisleithania  is  confided 
to  seven  ministers,  those  of  the  interior,  justice,  public  education, 
trade,  agriculture,  finance,  and  defence  ;  this  last  must  not  be 
confounded  with  the  minister  of  war  who  holds  office  from  the 
whole  empire.  Besides  these  the  emperor  reserves  the  right 
of  nominating  one  or  more  ministers  who  hold  no  portfolio, 
but  represent  the  rights  of  certain  countries  to  self-government, 
or  their  historical  traditions,  such  as  are  possessed  by  Bohemia 
and  Galicia.  At  the  head  of  each  state  or  province  there  is 
placed  a  lieutenant  or  governor;  and  each  province  is  again 
divided  into  circles  {Bezirke),  having  each  at  its  head  a  captain 
(^Bezirkshauptmann).  Each  parish  governs  itself  so  far  as 
concerns  its  internal  affairs,  except  with  regard  to  education, 
the  schools  of  both  parishes  and  circles  being  subordinate  to 
a  provincial  council  of  education,  which  also  manages  the 
financial  arrangements  of  the  schools.  Justice  is  administered 
by  the  high  court  of  Vienna,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  court 
of  appeal,  by  nine  superior  courts  {Oberlandsgerichte),  sixty-two 
provincial  courts,  and  eight  hundred  and  ninety-six  lower  courts. 
Trial  by  jury  exists  both  for  ordinary  crime  and  press  offences; 
but  in  so  polyglot  a  state  as  Austria,  where  so  many  races  are 
in  perpetual  conflict,  trial  by  jury  does  not  guarantee  justice  to 
the  same  extent  as  it  does  in  other  lands.  In  Bohemia,  for 
instance,  if  the  writer  of  a  Chekh  article  written  against  the 
Germans  is  tried  before  a  jury  in  a  Chekh  town,  he  is  almost 


ORGANIZATION  OF  HUNGARY  AND    CROATIA.      621 

certain  to  be  acquitted ;  but  if  he  is  sent — as  has  happened 
more  than  once — by  the  higher  authorities  to  be  tried  by  a 
jury  in  a  German  to.vn,  he  is  equally  certain  to  be  condemned. 
The  Cisleithanian  countries  are  divided  among  three 
hundred  and  twenty-seven  captains  of  circles.  Thirty-two 
royal  cities  hold  a  privileged  position.  There  is  a  Court 
of  Accounts  at  Vienna  for  the  whole  of  this  part  of  the  empire. 

Organization  of  Hungary. 

In  Hungary,  as  in  Austria,  there  are  two  chambers  which 
meet  every  year  ;— the  chamber  of  magnates,  which  used  at 
one  time  to  consist  of  more  than  seven  hundred  members,  and 
which  now  contains  about  three  hundred — three  of  these  are 
archdukes,  forty  are  bishops,  thirteen  palatines,  seven  hereditary 
princes,  one  hundred  and  fifty-nine  counts,  thirty-seven  heredi- 
tary barons,  and  seventy-eight  are  members  chosen  by  the  king 
and  by  the  chamber  itself — and  the  chamber  of  deputies,  con- 
taining four  hundred  and  forty-four  members  who  are  elected 
for  three  years.  Croatia-Slavonia  has  an  organization  of  its 
own,  with  a  diet  which  meets  at  Agram.  It  sends  thirty-nine 
deputies  to  the  parliament  at  Buda-Pesth,  in  which  city  it  is  also 
represented  by  its  own  special  minister.  Hungary,  like  Cislei- 
thania,  has  seven  ministers,  besides  the  minister  for  Croatia,  and 
a  minister  attached  to  the  emperor  who  represents  the  general 
interests  of  the  kingdom.  I'he  cabinet  may  also  be  presided 
over  by  yet  another  minister  without  portfolio.  The  king  (in 
Hungary  the  emperor  is  only  known  as  the  king)  nominates  the 
president  and  vice-president  of  the  chamber  of  magnates  \  the 
second  chamber  chooses  its  own  officers.  The  official  language 
is  Magyar,  and  the  thirty-nine  Croat  deputies  have  also  the  right 
to  use  their  own  language.  Croatia's  right  of  self-government 
within  the  Magyar  state  is  represented  by  the  Croat  deputies 
to  the  diet  meeting  at  Buda-Pesth,  and  by  a  special  governor 
of  the  land,  the  ban,  who  is  directly  nominated  by  the  king. 
A  special  convention  regulates  all  matters  between  Hungary 
and  Croatia.     Croatia  is,  however,  the  only  province  attached 


622  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

to  Hungary  which  possesses  these  privileges.  Hungary, 
properly  so-called,  is  divided  into  com i tats  which  enjoy  a 
considerable  amount  of  autonomy,  but  the  administration,  the 
office  of  prefect,  and  the  posts  of  deputy  are  almost  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  the  Magyars,  who  do  their  best  to  stifle  the  Slav 
and  Roumanian  spirit  of  nationality. 

The  institutions  of  Austro-Hungary  are  in  truth  much  more 
liberal  in  appearance  than  in  reality ;  they  do  not  secure  to  the 
various  nationalities  that  place  in  the  national  representative 
bodies  which  should  be  theirs  by  right  of  their  majority  ;  and, 
moreover,  certain  promises  contained  in  the  'Cisleithanian 
constitution  are  still  far  from  being  realized.  For  example, 
notwithstanding  all  the  progress  which  has  been  made  in  the 
last  few  years,  no  loyal  attempt  has  yet  been  made  to  bring 
about  perfect  equality  among  the  languages  in  either  schools, 
courts  of  justice,  or  in  the  administration. 

We  have  already  enumerated  the  various  titles  borne  by  the 
emperor.  The  arms  of  the  empire  are  a  two-headed  eagle, 
black,  with  extended  wings,  the  tongues  red,  the  talons  golden  ; 
it  holds  in  one  talon  a  sword,  in  the  other  an  orb  of  gold ;  on 
each  of  its  heads  rests  the  imperial  crown,  and  on  its  breast 
are  the  arms  of  the  house  of  Habsburg-Lorraine.  The  national 
colours  are  black  and  gold,  whence  comes  the  name  Schwarz- 
gelb,  and  the  title  of  Schwarzgelber  applied  to  the  partisans  of 
an  absolutist  and  Germanizing  policy.  The  Austrian  flag  is 
barred  with  white  and  red. 

In  all  matters  of  excise  the  two  nations  are  administered 
as  one,  and  the  small  principality  of  Lichtenstein  is  included 
in  the  customs-union  as  well  as  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina. 

Army  and  N'avy. 

The  law  concerning  the  army  which  is  now  in  force  is  the 
one  passed  in  December,  1869,  and  completed  by  the  acts  of 
1883  and  1886.  It  makes  service  obligatory,  and  divides  it 
into  three  years  of  active  service,  seven  with  the  reserves,  and 
two  with  the  landwehr  or  territorial  army.     The  common  army 


ARMY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY.  623 

of  the  two  portions  of  the  empire  is  under  the  control  of  the 
common  minister  of  war,  but  the  miUtia  in  each  portion  obeys 
a  national  authority.  In  Austria  this  force  is  called  the  land- 
tvehr ;  in  Hungary  the  Honveds.  German  is  the  official 
language  of  command ;  but  the  training  of  recruits  is  neces- 
sarily at  first  given  in  the  national  idioms,  and  this  use  of 
German  has  repeatedly  led  to  difficulties  both  in  Hungary  and 
Bohemia.  Men  may,  under  certain  conditions,  volunteer  to 
serve  for  one  year,  and  these  volunteers,  except  in  case  of 
poverty,  are  expected  to  support  themselves,  to  buy  their  own 
equipments,  and  even  their  own  horses.  Volunteers  may  also 
join  the  auxiliary  services,  the  medical  or  commissariat  de- 
partments, etc.  The  emperor  is  the  supreme  head  of  the 
army,  and  exercises  his  authority  by  means  of  the  ministers 
already  mentioned,  communicating  with  them  through  the 
royal  and  imperial  military  chancery.  The  commander-in- 
chief  is  under  his  immediate  control,  but  he  holds  no  com- 
munication with  him  except  through  the  minister  of  war. 
There  is  an  inspector-general  of  the  army,  an  office  held  at 
present  by  the  archduke  Albert,  the  victor  of  Custozza.  The 
cost  of  the  army  figures  in  the  different  budgets  of  Austro- 
Hungary  as  ^^i, 200,000,  of  which  ;^48o,ooo  are  paid  by  Cislei- 
thania,  and  ;,{^5  20,000  by  Hungary,  the  remainder  being  made 
up  from  the  common  budget.  The  yearly  contingent  to  the 
army  in  active  service  was  fixed  in  1868  at  95,474  men,  in  order 
that  the  permanent  force  should  be  maintained  at  800,000  men. 
All  recruits  belonging  to  the  liberal  professions  have  only  to 
serve  eight  weeks,  and  are  then  drafted  into  the  reserves ; 
seminarists  are  granted  leave  of  absence,  but  as  soon  as  they 
become  priests  their  names  are  inscribed  on  the  list  of  military 
chaplains.  The  recruit-reserves  {Ersatz-Reserve)  number  9000 
men,  who  remain  for  three  years  at  the  disposal  of  the  military 
authorities,  and  from  their  ranks  are  filled  up  the  vacancies 
which  occur  in  the  contingent.  Those  who  have  neither 
been  drafted  into  the  contingent  nor  into  the  Ersatz-Resett'e 
are  immediately  enrolled  in  the  landioehr,  and  may  be  called 


624  H-ISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

out  for  drill  every  second  year.  The  landstiirm  was  organized 
throughout  the  empire  by  a  law  passed  in  June,  1886;  every 
able-bodied  man  between  the  ages  of  nineteen  and  forty-five 
belongs  to  it.  The  total  war  establishment  consists  of  1,532,215 
men,  and  217,034  horses,  while  the  peace-footing  is  271,161 
men,  and  50,362  horses.  In  Hungary  the  Honveds  form  a 
permanent  force,  even  in  times  of  peace,  each  battalion  being 
obliged  to  have  in  readiness  a  certain  number  of  men  who 
are  either  volunteers  or  are  obliged  in  turn  to  bear  arms.  In 
T5T0I  and  Vorarlberg  every  able-bodied  citizen  from  the  age 
of  eighteen  to  that  of  forty-five  has  to  join  a  special  provincial 
force  which  numbers  40,000  men,  but  which  can  only  be 
called  upon  to  fight  in  defence  of  those  provinces. 

Officers  are  supplied  by  the  sixteen  military  schools  for 
cadets  and  by  the  two  academies  at  Vienna,  one  for  infantry 
and  cavalry,  the  other  for  artillery  and  engineers.  Besides 
these  establishments  there  are  also  at  Vienna  three  higher 
schools  for  officers.  The  infantry  is  divided  into  one  hundred 
and  two  regiments  of  the  line  of  four  battalions  each,  one 
regiment  of  Tyrolese  chasseurs  of  ten  battalions,  and  thirty- 
two  other  battalions  of  chasseurs  ;  besides  these,  four  infantry 
regiments  have  to  be  furnished  by  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina. 
Each  regiment  is  known  not  only  by  its  number,  but  also  by 
the  name  of  its  colonel,  who  may  be  some  great  foreigner, 
some  king  or  prince,  whose  name  is  taken  as  a  compliment 
and  whose  colonelcy  is  a  purely  honorary  one.  In  time  of 
peace  each  battalion  consists  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-two 
men,  in  time  of  war  of  nine  hundred.  The  landwehr  consists 
of  one  hundred  and  seventeen  battalions  from  Cisleithania,  of 
one  hundred  and  eight  battalions  of  the  Honveds  of  Hungary, 
and  twenty  of  the  carabineers  of  Tyrol.  The  war-footing  of 
the  whole  infantry  is  composed  of  eight  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  battalions,  forming  a  body  of  seven  hundred  and  eighty- 
five  thousand  effective  troops. 

The  cavalry  comprises  twenty  brigades  and  forty-one 
regiments,  of  which  fourteen  are  dragoons,  eleven  hulans,  and 


THE  NAVY.  625 

sixteen  hussars.  The  dragoons  are  furnished  by  Bohemia  and 
the  German  states,  the  hussars  by  Hungary,  and  the  hulans 
by  GaUcia  and  Transylvania.  All  are  light  cavalry.  The 
cavalry  of  the  land^vehr  of  Cisleithania  comprises  twenty-seven 
squadrons,  the  Honveds  forty  squadrons  of  hussars.  The 
artillery  is  composed  of  fourteen  brigades,  and  when  on  a  war- 
footing  is  made  up  of  1888  guns;  Germany  has  2934  at  her 
disposal,  and  Russia  more  than  4000.  The  landwehr  has  no 
artillery;  that  belonging  to  the  fortresses  contains  twelve 
battalions  of  five  companies  each  in  time  of  peace,  six  in  time 
of  war.  The  corps  of  engineers  consists  of  two  regiments,  to 
which  are  added  one  regiment  of  pioneers  and  one  attached 
to  the  railways  and  telegraphs.  Since  1883,  the  land  has  been 
divided  into  fifteen  military  districts,  whose  head-quarters  are 
Vienna,  Gratz,  Prague,  Josefstadt,  Briinn,  Cracow,  Lemberg, 
Innsbruck,  Zara,  Buda-Pesth,  Pressburg,  Kassau,  Temesvar, 
Hermannstadt,  and  Agram.  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  now 
form  a  sixteenth  whose  head-quarters  are  at  Serajevo.  In 
Cisleithania  the  generals  in  command  of  the  district  are  at 
the  same  time  in  command  of  the  landivehr ;  in  Hungary  the 
two  are  separate.  The  infantry  carry  Werndl  rifles,  with  a 
range  of  more  than  one  thousand  yards  ;  and  the  artillery  are 
provided  with  Uchatius  cannon  of  bronze.  The  guns  in  the 
fortresses  are  also  of  this  make. 

Notwithstanding  the  Austrian  reverses  of  1859  and  1866, 
the  army  is  a  fine  one,  and  it  is  officered  by  men  full  of  that 
pride  in  the  service  Avhich  is  the  best  guarantee  of  the  unity  of 
the  empire. 

The  natural  defences  of  Austro-Hungary  are  to  be  found 
in  the  mountains  which  surround  her  on  almost  every  side 
(except  that  they  leave  Galicia  outside),  the  sea,  and  the 
Danube ;  and  these  natural  defences  are  supplemented  by  a 
complete  system  of  forts  and  fortresses,  of  which  the  chief  are 
Teresin  in  Bohemia ;  Olumouc  in  Moravia ;  Cracow  and 
Premysl  in  Galacia  ;  Eperjes,  Komaron,  -Buda,  Petrovaradin, 
Ijraschau    (Kronstadt),    and     Osjek    (Esseg)    in    Hungary ; 

2  s 


626  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

Franzens  Festung  and  Kufstein  in  Tyrol ;  Salzburg  and  Linz 
in  Austria,  and  Pola  on  the  Adriatic. 

The  roads  which  cross  the  Tyrol  are  also  well  defended. 
Vienna  is  not  fortified ;  her  only  protection  lies  in  some 
outworks  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Danube.  There  is  in  Vienna 
a  remarkable  institution  for  military  geography,  which  is  en- 
trusted with  the  execution  of  works  of  geodesy  and  topography, 
the  making  of  maps  and  plans  which  are  carefully  brought 
up  to  date,  and  the  publication  of  such  information  connected 
with  their  department  as  may  wisely  be  made  public. 

The  navy  consisted  in  January,  1888,  of  no  ships  of 
183,285  tons,  or  26,786  horse-power,  armed  with  301  guns, 
and  manned  by  11,309  sailors.  In  time  of  war  the  officers  of 
this  navy  are  three  vice-admirals,  three  rear-admirals,  forty 
captains  of  ships,  forty-four  captains  of  frigates,  and  twenty-five 
captains  of  corvettes.  Fifteen  hundred  sailors  are  recruited 
each  year.  The  length  of  service  is  nine  years,  four  of  active 
service  and  five  in  the  reserves.  The  fleet  is  entirely  manned 
by  the  sailors  of  Istria  and  Dalmatia  ;  it  distinguished  itself 
at  Lissa  in  1866,  and  has  had  some  distinguished  men  as  its 
leaders,  as,  for  example,  Admiral  Tegetthof  The  principal 
naval  post  is  Pola.  There  are  two  schools  for  the  navy ;  one 
at  Fiume  for  sub-officers,  the  other  at  Pola  for  the  higher 
officers.  Two  moniteurs  for  the  police  of  the  Danube  are 
included  in  the  number  of  ships  given  above.  The  flag  of  the 
Austrian  navy  has  three  horizontal  bands  of  red,  white,  and 
red;  the  flag  of  the  mercantile  marine  bears  in  addition  a 
band  of  green,  which  is  one  of  the  national  colours  of  Hun- 
gary. The  mercantile  marine  numbered  in  1886,  9728  ships 
of  287,267  tons  burden,  manned  by  29,568  sailors. 

Populatioti. 

Austro-Hungary  ranks  at  present  third  as  to  population 
among  the  European  states  ;  Russia,  with  her  vast  territory,  and 
Germany  are  the  two  countries  which  are  more  populous. 
The  census  of  1885  gave  the  following  figures  : — 


POPULATION. 


627 


POPULATION   ACCORDING   TO   CENSUS    OF    \\ 


Square  miles. 

Population. 

Per  sq. 
mile. 

Lower  Austria 

7,722 

2,468,898 

320 

Upper  Austria 

4,680 

767,779 

X62 

Duchy  of  Salzburg    ... 

2,799 

166,925 

59 

Duchy  of  Styria 

8,771 

1,241,651 

142 

Duchy  of  Carinthia 

4,051 

353,485 

87 

Duchy  of  Carniola 

3,859 

491,562 

127 

Istria,  Trieste,  Gorica,  and  Gradisca 

3,120 

664,534 

213 

Tyrol 

10,422 

801,859 

77 

Vorarlberg      

1,016 

109,107 

107 

Kingdom  of  Bohemia 

20,295 

5,697,883 

281 

Margraviate  of  Moravia 

8,682 

2,187,475 

252 

Duchy  of  Silesia        

2,010 

581,977 

290 

Kingdom  of  Galicia 

30,662 

6,219,660 

204 

Duchy  of  Bukowina  ... 

4,082 

610,335 

149 

Dalmatia        

4,997 

503,694 
22,866,824 

lOI 

Total       ... 

117,168 

195 

Kingdom     of    Hungary,     including 

Transylvania          ...         ...         ... 

109,277 

13,728,622 

125 

Fiume  and  its  territory 

7 

20,981 

2997 

Kingdom  of  Croatia 

16,579 

1,893,499 
15,643,102 

114 

125,863 

124 

Bosnia  and  Herzegovina 

24,245 

1,504,091 

62 

The  whole  population  of  the  empire  must  now  be  more  than 
forty  millions.  The  average  number  of  inhabitants  to  the 
square  mile  in  the  two  portions  of  the  kingdom  is  one  hundred 
and  forty-nine.  The  census  of  1857,  which  was  the  first  to 
be  conducted  on  really  scientific  principles,  gave  a  population 
of  thirty-two  millions,  that  of  1869  thirty-six  millions;  the 
annual  growth  of  the  people  seems  to  be  about  three  hundred 
thousand.  The  average  number  of  births  seems  to  be  about 
four  per  cent. ;  that  of  deaths,  three  per  cent.  The  following 
table  shows  the  number  of  births  and  deaths  for  the  years 
1 880-1 88  7  for  Cisleithania,  for  those  of  18S0-1885  for 
Hungary. 


628 


HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

CiSLEITHANIA  OR  AUSTRIA. 


Years. 

Marriages. 

Births. 

Deaths. 

Excess  of 
Births. 

1 88b 

167,200 

850,009 

676,287 

173,722 

I88I 

176,983 

855.937 

698,976 

156,961 

1882 

183,378     ■ 

897.437 

710,902 

185.571 

1883 

176,016 

882,654 

701,199 

181,445 

1884 

179,171 

902,771 

690.973 

211,798 

1885 

175,233 

885,201 

714,030 

171,171 

1886 

180,791 

901,003 

703.398 

197,605 

1887 

182,088 

915,555 

688,379 

217,176 

Transleithania  or  Hungary, 

1880 

147.314 

674,761 

585.578 

89,183 

I88I 

162,128 

724,428 

566,366 

158,062 

1882 

124,860 

597,591 

529,213 

68,578 

1883 

145,004 

640,235 

461,667 

179,168 

1884 

144,416 

660,086 

449,621 

214,465 

1885 

165,169 

750,200 

535,740 

210,460 

The  most  populous  towns  are  Vienna  (1,103,857  inhabitants), 
Prague  (177,026),  Lwowor  Lemberg  (109,746),  Gratz  (97,791), 
Brno  (82,660),  Trieste  (74,544),  Cracow  (66,095),  Buda-Pesth 
(360,551),  Szeged  (72,675),  Debreczin  (51,122),  Hosszomezo 
Vasarhely  (50,966),  Pozsony  (48,006) ;  but  these  figures  being 
taken  from  the  census  of  1880  are  generally  below  the  reality. 
There  only  remains  for  us  to  give  some  information  about 
those  Austro-Hungarian  subjects  who  dwell  in  foreign  lands. 
The  empire  has  no  colonies,  but  every  year  a  considerable  number 
of  its  inhabitants  emigrate,  most  of  them  without  hope  of  return. 
We  have  no  accurate  statistics  of  emigration ;  the  official  list 
enumerates  only  7366  emigrants  from  Austria,  and  1301  from 
Hungary,  in  the  year  1883,  but  it  only  includes  those  who  had 
taken  out  passports,  and  that  these  are  but  a  small  number  of 
the  whole  is  proved  by  the  emigration  lists  of  Hamburg  and 
Bremen  for  the  same  year,  8883  Austrian  emigrants  from  the 
former  port,  and  9968  from  the  latter  having  been  entered. 
That  large  numbers,  especially  in  Bohemia,  do  leave  their 
country,  is  an  important  fact.    Emigration  agents  from  Hamburg 


NATURAL  RESOURCES.  629 

are  to  be  found  in  all  the  large  towns  of  the  empire,  and  every 
transatlantic  steamer  carries  with  it  some  Austrian  subjects 
who  never  mean  to  return.  Those  who  are  of  German  origin 
are  easily  confounded  with  the  natives  of  a  Greater  Germany, 
but  the  Slavs  are  always  to  be  distinguished,  and  no  less  than 
200,000  Chekhs  are  known  to  be  resident  in  North  America. 
Their  principal  centre  is  Chicago.  Others  of  the  race  emigrate 
to  Russia,  especially  to  Volyhnia  and  the  Caucasian  districts  ; 
a  certain  number  of  them  become  converts  to  the  Orthodox 
Greek  Church.  Poles  and  Ruthenians  have  colonies  in 
America,  Slavs  and  Dalmatians  are  numerous  in  San  Francisco, 
and  Magyars  also  are  to  be  found  in  various  parts  of  the  New 
World. 

Natural  Resources. 

The  natural  resources  of  Austro-Hungary  are  as  varied  as 
its  climate.  The  chief  industry  is  agriculture,  and  it  occupies 
about  three-fourths  of  the  population.  The  land  in  cultivation 
comprises  about  eighty-nine  per  cent,  of  the  entire  surface  of 
the  empire,  thirty-two  per  cent,  being  given  up  to  cereals,  one 
per  cent,  to  vines,  twenty-six  per  cent,  to  pasture,  twenty-nine 
per  cent,  to  forests.  The  principal  crops  are — i.  Grain,  ;vheat, 
oats,  barley,  and  maize,  which  are  sufficiently  abundant  to  be 
largely  exported ;  2.  Potatoes ;  3.  Tobacco,  especially  in 
Hungary ;  4.  Hemp  and  flax,  which  are  produced  by  Galicia, 
but  not  in  sufficient  quantity  to  supply  the  wants  of  the 
empire;  5.  Wine,  of  which  173,480,912  gallons  were  produced 
in  the  year  1884  (the  vine  is  cultivated  in  Hungary,  Croatia, 
Slavonia,  Dalmatia,  Tyrol,  Bohemia,  and  Moravia  ;  some  kinds, 
as,  for  instance,  the  Tokaj  of  Hungary  and  the  wine  of  Ofen 
and  Voslau,  are  renowned  throughout  Europe) ;  6.  Hops,  which 
produce  the  excellent  beers  of  Bohemia  and  Vienna,  of  which 
the  beer  of  Saaz  in  Bohemia  ranks  the  highest ;  7.  Fruit;  this, 
without  being  in  any  way  remarkable,  is  yet  of  a  satisfactory 
character ;  and  8.  Spices,  especially  cummin  and  paprica,  or, 
the  red  pepper  of  Hungary.     There  is  a  considerable  export 


630  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

trade  in  cattle.  Sheep  are  raised  all  over  the  empire,  horned 
cattle  especially  in  the  mountainous  districts,  horses  on  the 
vast  plains  or  pusztas  of  Hungary,  and  buffaloes  in  Tran- 
sylvania. The  last  census  of  animals  taken  in  1880  gave  the 
following  results : — 

Horses        3,541,810 

Asses  and  Mules 83,364 

Oxen           I3!893,455 

Sheep          13,679,437 

Goats          1,339,809 

Pigs            6,881,668 

Game  is  most  abundant,  especially  in  Bohemia.  Bees  are  success- 
fully cultivated  in  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Galicia,  the  two  Austrias, 
Carinthia,  and  Carniola ;  silkworms  in  Southern  Tyrol,  Istria, 
and  Dalmatia.  Excellent  fish  is  found  in  the  Tisza  and  the 
Danube,  as  well  as  in  the  Adriatic. 

The  mineral  riches  of  Austro-Hungary  are  very  great,  and 
include  every  kind  but  platinurru  Gold  is  found  in  Tran- 
sylvania and  Tyrol ;  silver  in  Hungary ;  mercury  in  Carniola  ; 
iron  in  Styria,  Carinthia,  Hungary,  and  Bohemia ;  lead  in 
Carinthia,  Tyrol,  and  Bohemia ;  zinc  in  Galicia  and  the 
Croatian  Alps ;  copper  in  Hungary,  Transylvania,  Tyrol,  and 
Salzburg.  Coal  is  obtained  in  large  quantities,  and  numerous 
mines  throughout  the  empire  have  not  yet  been  worked.  The 
best  coalfields  are  in  Bohemia,  but  it  is  found  everywhere 
except  in  Salzburg  and  Bukowina.  In  1884,  no  less  than 
19,000,000  tons  were  raised.  The  best  salt-mines  are  in 
Galicia  ;  those  of  Wieliczka  and  Bocknia  supply  most  of  the 
salt  used  throughout  the  empire ;  this  article  is  a  government 
monopoly,  and  in  1887  produced  ;^i,  108,300.  There  are 
mines  also  in  Hungary  and  Transylvania,  and  salt  is  extracted 
from  springs  in  Upper  Austria,  Salzburg,  and  in  Styria  at  Hall- 
stadt,  in  the  district  called  the  Salt-region  {Sahkammergut), 
where  the  mines  which  have  been  worked  ever  since  the  Iron 
Age  have  given  rise  to  the  busy  life  of  Ischl,  Ebensee,  Avensee, 
Hallein,  and  in  the  neighbouring  town  of  Hall.  There  are 
also  salt-works  on  the  coast  of  Dalmatia  and  Istria. 


INDUSTRY  AND   COMMERCE.  63  I 

Building-Stone  and  marble  are  found  abundantly  ;  and  the 
many  precious  stones  of  the  empire  are  renowned,  especially 
the  Hungarian  opals,  which  are  known  in  trade  as  eastern  opals, 
and  the  garnets  of  Bohemia.  Beryls,  amethysts,  rubies, 
sapphires,  and  emeralds  are  also  found.  Another  source  of 
riches  lies  in  the  mineral  springs  of  Austro-Hungary ;  noother 
state  possesses  so  many  or  of  such  varied  qualities.  The 
principal  are  Karlsbad,  Marienbad,  Franzenbad,  and  Piillna  in 
Bohemia  ;  Rohitsch  in  Styria ;  Balaton  Fiired  in  Hungary  ;  to 
which  we  may  add  Gastein,  Baden,  Ischl,  Aussee,  and  Mehadia. 
Some  of  these  springs  have  aij  important  export  trade.  Galicia 
possesses  petroleum  mines  of  great  value. 

Meajis  of  Commwiication. 

Cisleithania,  together  with  Hungary  and  Bosnia,  possessed 
in  1 8 88,  14,354  miles  of  railway.  The  navigation  of  the 
Danube  is  most  important.  The  Privileged  Imperial  and  Royal 
Danubian  Steamboat  Company  possesses  189  steam-boats,  and 
741  iron  lighters,  and  performs  the  service  on  the  Danube  from 
Ratisbon  to  Sulina,  on  the  Tisza,  the  Save,  Drave,  and  on  the 
Black  Sea  from  Sulina  to  Odessa.  In  1885,  the  number  of 
post-offices  in  Austria  was  4263,  in  Hungary  3613.  In  1883, 
the  post-office  receipts  were  for  Austria  20,002,730  florins,  for 
Hungary  7,908,397  florins.  By  1887,  Austria  had  24,490,  and 
in  1886,  Hungary  had  11,100  miles  of  telegraph  wires.  There 
are  but  few  canals  in  the  empire  ;  the  chief  are  that  from  Vienna 
to  Neustadt  in  Lower  Austria,  the  Francis  canal  in  Hungary, 
which  unites  the  Danube  to  the  Tisza,  and  the  two  lateral 
canals  of  the  Bega  and  the  Temes ;  but  none  of  these  are  of 
great  length. 

Industry  afid  ConiDierce. 

About  eight  millions  of  men,  or  a  quarter  of  the  whole 
population  of  the  empire,  are  occupied  in  manufacturing 
industries,  which  have  made  rapid  strides  since  1859,  when  a 
law  was  passed  doing  away  with  the  monopolies  of  the  guilds 
and  making  all  industry  free.     In  Dalmatia,  Bukowina,  and 


6^2  HISTORY  OF  AVSTRO-HUNGARY. 

along  the  old  military  frontiers  there  is  hardly  any  business 
carried  on,  but  in  Lower  Austria,  Bohemia,  Moravia,  and 
Silesia  it  is  highly  developed,  the  spinning  of  cotton,  v^rool, 
hemp,  and  flax  being  common  throughout  the  whole  of  these 
provinces,  and  having  great  centres  at  Rumburg  and  Reichen- 
berg  in  Bohemia,  Brno  and  Olomouc  in  Moravia.  At  Vienna 
and  Prague  there  is  a  large  trade  in  articles  of  scented  leather, 
which  rival  those  of  Paris  and  are  largely  exported.  The  iron 
trade  is  most  highly  developed  in  Styria,  Carinthia,  Bohemia, 
Hungary,  and  Moravia ;  Vienna,  Waidhofen  in  Lower,  and 
Steyer  in  Upper  Austria  are  the  principal  depots.  Villach  in 
Styria  has  a  large  trade  in  lead,  Prague  and  Brno  have  one  in 
machinery.  Pottery,  porcelain,  paper,  and  glass  of  a  high  value 
are  all  made  in  Bohemia,  while  the  trade  in  beetroot  sugar  is 
very  active  both  in  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Hungary,  and  Galicia. 
Beer  is  the  national  drink  throughout  a  large  portion  of  the 
empire,  especially  in  Bohemia,  Moravia,  Galicia,  and  some  parts 
of  the  German  provinces.  The  most  important  breweries  are  in 
Vienna,  Prague,  Buda-Pesth,  and  Gratz,  but  especially  at  Pilsen 
in  Bohemia,  whose  breweries  produce  4,400,000  gallons,  and 
supply  great  part  of  the  demand  in  the  East  and  along  the 
Mediterranean.  In  1885,  there  were  797  breweries  in  Bohemia, 
and  in  that  year  the  beer  made  in  Cisleithania  alone  amounted 
to  275,000,000  gallons.  The  greater  number  of  the  distilleries 
in  the  land  are  owned  and  worked  by  the  cultivators  of  the  soil 
themselves,  and  are  calculated  to  be  about  100,000  ;  there  are 
also  more  than  5000  brandy  distilleries.  In  Southern  Hungary 
and  in  Croatia  a  particular  kind  of  brandy  is  made  from  plums, 
and  is  called  Slivovitsa ;  it  is  much  used  by  the  people  along 
the  Danube.  Dalmatia  is  celebrated  for  its  maraschino  and 
Goritz  for  its  rosoglio. 

The  smaller  industries  are  tobacco,  which  is  worked  by  the 
state,  and  is  largely  produced  in  Hungary ;  candles,  matches, 
jewellery,  trinket-making,  and  paper-making.  The  Viennese 
articles  of  leather,  wood,  and  meerschaum  are  cheap,  fanciful, 
and  in  good  taste.     Printing  has  its  largest  centres  in  Vienna 


FINANCES. 


633 


and  Prague  ;  the  imperial  printing-press  at  Vienna  is  one  of  the 
finest  in  Europe.  Musical  instruments  are  also  made  in 
Vienna  and  some  parts  of  Bohemia,  and  Viennese  furniture  is 
exported  all  over  the  world. 

The  imports  and  exports  were  as  follows  during  the  years 
1880-1886  :— 


i'ears. 

Imports. 

Exports. 

Florins. 

Florins. 

1880 

613,500,000      ... 

...      675,994,430 

1881 

631,844,790      ... 

...      731,470,615 

1882 

654,173,746       ... 

...      781,892,772 

1883 

624,890,339       ... 

...      749,920,513 

1884 

612,900,000 

...      708,700,000 

1885 

557,900,000       ... 

...      672,100,000 

18S6 

539,200,000      ... 

...      698,600,000 

In  1 886,  the  principal  exports  were  cereals,  wood,  sugar, 
hardware  and  clocks,  cattle  and  woollen  goods.  In  1887,  the 
direct  imports  from  Great  Britain  amounted  to  ;^i,228,777, 
and  the  direct  exports  to  Great  Britain  ^1,586,172. 


Finances. 
The  standard  coin  of  Austro-Hungary  is  the  florin,  which  is 
nominally  worth  two  shillings,  but,  in  consequence  of  the  forced 
circulation  of  paper  money,  is  actually  worth  about  one  shilling 
and  ninepence.  Pieces  of  eight  and  four  florins  are  struck  for 
international  use.  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  condition  of 
the  finances  is  anything  but  prosperous.  A  disastrous  bank- 
ruptcy was  the  result  of  the  wars  which  marked  the  beginning 
of  the  century,  and  the  crash  of  1873  caused  most  serious  loss 
both  to  the  state  and  to  individuals.  The  stock  exchange  of 
Vienna  is  one  of  those  where  speculation  is  most  rife.  The 
budgets  of  1888  for  Austria  gave  ;^4i,335,ooo  as  the  amount 
of  revenue,  and  ^48,030,000  as  that  of  expenditure,  and  the 
public  debt  as  ^83,09 1,660.  For  Hungary,  the  revenue  was 
in  1887  _;^28,937, 630,  and  the  expenditure  ;^29, 547, 853.  The 
public  debt  for  the  whole  of  the  empire  is  twenty-seven  millions 
of  florins.     Austria  has  three  budgets  ;  one  for  both  divisions  of 


634  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

the  empire  together,  another  for  Cisleithania,  and  a  third  for 
Hungary.     The  empire  has  adopted  the  metric  system. 

Religion. 

The  variety  of  nationalities  which  go  to  make  up  the 
Austro-Hungarian  empire  are  necessarily  divided  amongst  a 
variety  of  religions,  and  tolerance  is  one  of  the  principles  most 
vital  to  such  a  state.  In  theory,  the  sovereign  must  belong  to 
the  Catholic  Church  ;  as  king  of  Hungary  he  takes  the  title 
of  apostolic  prince ;  and  there  is  no  instance  of  a  member  of 
the  imperial  family  having  belonged  to  any  other  than  the 
Roman  Church.  Both  the  emperor  and  the  empress  take 
part  in  the  great  ceremonies  of  Catholic  worship.  Ctergy  of 
all  persuasions  enjoy  a  position  of  considerable  dignity  and 
possess  large  property,  as  they  did  in  France  before  the  revolu- 
tion. It  is  said  that  some  bishops  have  very  large  incomes. 
They,  and  sometimes  also  the  abbots,  have  a  right  to  seats  in 
the  diets.  Their  large  revenues  are  used  in  a  great  measure  for 
the  intellectual  development  of  the  various  nationalities,  and, 
it  being  consequently  the  interest  of  the  people  to  have  rich 
bishops,  there  is  hardly  ever  any  question  of  the  separation  of 
Church  and  State.  The  larger  part  of  the  population,  about 
twenty-five  millions,  are  Catholics ;  but  besides  the  Latin 
Catholics  there  are  in  Hungary,  Galicia,  and  Croatia  a  certain 
number  of  U7iited  Catholics,  that  is  to  say,  persons  who  originally 
belonged  to  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church,  and  who  have  pre- 
served their  right  to  celebrate  the  liturgy  in  their  national 
language  (Slav)  and  to  have  a  married  clergy.  Most  of  the 
Protestants  are  in  Hungary,  in  which  country  their  number 
reaches  three  millions.  The  Orthodox  Greek  Church  has 
most  members  among  the  Servians  and  Roumanians.  The 
following  were  the  numbers  in  1888  : — 

Roman  Catholics  ...         ...         ...         ...  ...  30,000,000 

Protestants              ...         ...         ...         ...  ...  3,616,000 

Greeks  and  Armenians    ...         ...         ...  ...  3,500,000 

Jews            ...  1,648,000 

Mohammedans,  Tziganes,  etc.    ...         ...  ...  493,000 


INTELLECTUAL    CULTURE.  635 

There  are  Catholic  archbishops  at  Salzburg,  Vienna, 
Prague,  Olomouc,  Lwow,  Goritz,  and  Zara ;  also  at  Gran, 
Kalocsa,  Eger,  and  Zagreb.  There  is  an  archbishop  of  the 
Uniate  Greek  Church  at  Gran  for  the  Ruthenians,  and  a 
Roumanian  archbishop  of  the  Uniate  Catholics  at  Balasfalva 
in  Transylvania.  The  Servians  have  an  Orthodox  Greek 
archbishop  at  Karlovci,  and  the  Orthodox  Roumanians  have 
one  at  Sibin,  The  two  Servian  bishops  of  Zara  and  Cattaro 
are  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Orthodox  Archbishop  of 
Cernowic  in  Bukowina.  The  Catholic  clergy,  including  monks, 
numbers  fifty  thousand  persons.  The  Protestant  Churches  of 
the  Augsburg  Confession  are  under  the  direction  of  a  con- 
sistory, meeting  at  Vienna,  while  those  of  the  Helvetian  Con- 
fession are  ruled  by  a  general  synod  of  their  own  in  the 
capital ;  and  the  Unitarians  of  Transylvania  have  a  consistory 
which  meets  in  that  province. 

Intellectual  Culture. 

In  an  empire  which  is  a  very  mosaic  of  races  there  can  be 
no  hope  of  finding  a  common  standard  of  civilization  ;  a  vast 
abyss  lies  between  the  wealthy  peasant  of  Salzburg  and  the 
rude  mountaineer  of  Cattaro  or  the  shepherd  who  roams  the 
pusztas  of  Hungary.  Some  figures  will  enable  us  the  better  to 
understand  this.  A  few  years  ago,  among  one  thousand  con- 
scripts, there  were  found  of  those  who  could  not  read,  15  from 
Lower  Austria,  190  from  Bohemia,  900  from  Bukowina,  957 
from  Dalmatia  !  In  Austria  there  was  hardly  any  elementary 
education  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  it  was 
not  till  1848  that  a  minister  of  public  education  was  appointed. 
The  concordat  of  1855  in  replacing  all  schools  un4er  the  care 
of  the  priests,  brought  them  under  so  adverse  an  influence 
that  in  i860  this  department  of  government  was  suppressed, 
and  it  was  not  restored  till  1867,  when  ministers  of  education 
were  appointed  both  far  Vienna  and  Buda-Pesth.  On  the 
suppression  of  the  concordat,  primary  instruction,  which  then 
was  placed  in  the  hands  of  laymen  and  made  free,  made  rapid 


6^6  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

progress ;  but  this  progress  has  necessarily  varied  with  the 
previous  condition  of  the  various  provinces.  Teaching  in 
Austria  is  carried  on  in  the  national  language ;  but  elsewhere, 
in  the  mixed  provinces,  the  strongest  race  politically  en- 
deavours, and  usually  with  success,  to  force  its  tongue  on 
the  weaker  ones ;  this  is  the  case  among  the  Slovenes,  where 
the  Germans  have  got  possession  of  the  schools,  and  in  Istria, 
where  the  Italians  make  the  Slavs  teach  in  Italian.  The 
Germans  everywhere  are  apt  to  look  upon  themselves  as 
intellectually  the  privileged  race,  but  it  is  only  in  Upper  and 
Lower  Austria  and  in  Silesia  that  this  is  actually  the  case. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Chekhs  of  Bohemia  are  in 
advance  of  the  Germans  of  either  Tyrol  or  Carinthia. 

In  Hungary  also  the  organization  of  schools  dated  from 
the.  time  of  Maria  Theresa,  but  all  progress  was  paralysed  by 
the  constant  efforts  of  the  government  in  Vienna  to  substitute 
German  for  the  national  languages.  The  revolution  of  1848 
led  to  the  formation  of  a  ministry  of  public  education,  and 
proclaimed  all  primary  education  free  and  compulsory — reforms 
which,  however,  were  not  carried  out.  When  Hungary  recovered 
its  independence  elementary  education  was  again  made  com- 
pulsory, but  the  law  has  never  been  rigorously  enforced,  and 
there  are  about  three  hundred  parishes  still  without  schools. 

In  1 880-1 88 1,  in  some  comitats  the  average  attendance 
was  ninety  per  cent,  while  in  others  it  was  only  thirty-four  per 
cent.  Some  schools  in  the  mixed  provinces  are  still  denomi- 
national, and  the  difficulties  of  education  are  increased  by  the 
need  of  learning  or  even  of  forcing  the  Magyar  language  on 
children  to  whom  it  is  not  the  mother-tongue.  In  1882,  there 
were  in  Austria  34,172  elementary  schools,  144  normal  schools, 
114  professional  schools,  63  professional  ^w^^j'/wwi',  and  nine 
polytechnic  schools ;  the  latter  were  in  Vienna,  Prague  (2), 
Brno,  Gratz,  Cracow,  Lwow,  Trieste,  and  Buda-Pesth ;  besides 
these  there  were  285  classical  gymnasiums.  In  Hungary  the 
numbers  were  1545  elementary,  30  professional  schools,  and 
146  gym7iasiinns.    There  are  universities  in  Vienna,  Prague  (2), 


UNIVERSITIES  AND  SCHOOLS.  637 

Gratz,  Innsbruck,  Cernovic,  Cracow,  Lwow,  Buda-Pesth,  Ko- 
losvar,  and  Zagreb.  The  universities  of  Vienna,  Gratz,  Inns- 
bruck, and  Cernovic  teach  in  German  ;  the  Chekh  universities 
of  Prague  in  Chekh ;  that  of  Cracow  in  PoUsh ;  that  of  Lwow 
in  Polish  and  Ruthenian  ;  those  of  Buda-Pesth  and  Kolosvar 
in  Magyar ;  that  of  Zagreb  in  Croatian.  The  Slovenes  have  no 
university.  It  is  often  asked  what  a  German  university  has  to 
do  in  Bukowina  in  the  midst  of  a  population  of  Roumanians, 
Ruthenians,  and  Poles.  It  was  long  considered  that  all  Jews 
frequenting  the  universities  were  Germans,  but  since  national 
universities  have  been  established  it  has  been  found  that 
numbers  of  them  are  ready  to  learn  in  other  languages  than 
German.  The  university  of  Prague,  which  was  founded  in 
1348,  is  the  most  ancient  in  the  empire.  It  was  first  Latin  and 
then  German,  and  recently  has  been  divided  into  two  univer- 
sities, one  teaching  in  German,  the  other  in  Chekh  ;  the  latter 
is  in  a  very  flourishing  condition.  The  university  of  Cracow 
was  founded  in  1364,  and  that  of  Vienna  in  1365.  There  is 
no  Chair  of  Medicine  either  at  Lwow,  Cernovic,  or  Zagreb. 
The  proportion  of  German  universities  is  higher  than  that  of 
the  other  languages,  and  the  Slovenes  of  Cisleithania,  and  the 
Slovaks,  Servians,  and  Roumanians  of  Hungary  have  still  no 
place  of  higher  education  where  they  can  study  in  their  mother- 
tongues.  There  are  a  large  number  of  technical  schools, 
especially  for  mines  and  forests,  throughout  the  country.  There 
are  also  an  oriental  academy  at  Vienna,  academies  of  the 
fine  arts  at  Vienna,  Prague,  Gratz,  Cracow,  and  Buda-Pesth, 
and  excellent  co?iservatoires  in  Vienna,  Prague,  and  Buda-Pesth. 
The  principal  learned  societies  are  the  academy  of  science  at 
Vienna,  the  royal  scientific  academy  of  Prague,  the  Hun- 
garian academy,  the  Polish  academy  at  Cracow,  and  the 
Southern-Slav  academy  at  Zagreb.  As  we  have  said  before, 
there  can  be  no  Austrian  literature,  properly  so-called ;  the 
German  writers  of  Austria,  among  whom  there  are  some 
remarkable  men,  belong  to  German  literature,  and  the  Magyar 
and  Slav  writers  to  the  literatures  of  their  various  countries. 


TABLE  OF  SOVEREIGNS  WHO  HAVE  REIGNED 
OVER  THE  STATES  WHICH  EITHER  NOW 
COMPOSE  THE  AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN  MON- 
ARCHY, OR    HAVE   BELONGED  TO    IT 

AUSTRIA  PROPERLY  SO  CALLED. 


"HQUSE    OF    BABENBERG  (973-1246). 


Leopold  I.  (Margrave)  973 — 994 

Henry  1 994-1018 

Adalbert  the  Victorious  1018- 1056 

Ernest  the  Valiant    ...  1056-1075 

Leopold  IL     ..          ...  107 5-1096 

Leopold  IIL,  the  Saint  1096-1136 


Leopold  IV 1136-1141 

Henry  Iasomirgott(Duke)i  141-1 177 
Leopold  v.,  the  Pious      11 77-1 194 

Frederic  1 1194-1198 

Leopold  VL,  the  Proud    1 198-1230 
Frederic  IL,  the  Fighter  1230-1246 


STYRIA. 


Otokar  I.  (Margrave) 

Otokar  II 

Otokar  III 

Otokar  IV 


991 

991-1038 

I 038- I 092 

1092- I 122 

Styria  is  united  to  Austria. 


Leopold  the  Strong 
Otokar  V. 
Otokar  VI.  (Duke) 


1122-1129 

1129-1164 
1164-1192 


TYROL. 

The  dynasty  of  the  Counts  of  Andechs,  Dukes  of  Meran,  comes  to  an 
end  in  1248  :  their  domains  pass  to  the  Counts  of  Tyrol  under  ; 


Albert  III. 

1253 

Henry  of  Carinthia   ... 

1295-1335 

Menhardt  III. 

...     1254-1258 

Margaret  Maultasche 

1335-1363 

Menhardt  IV. 

...     1258-1295 

Menhardt  V. 

1363 

Tyrol  is  united  to  Austria. 


TABLE   OF  SOVEREIGNS. 


639 


Borut 
Karat 


CARINTHIA. 

SLAVONIC    PRINCES. 
748-750   I    Chotimir 
750-753    I    Vladuc 
Rule  of  the  Franks  (788-976). 


753-769 
772-788 


INDEPENDENT  DUKES  (976-1335). 


Henry  of  Scheyer  ...  976-978 
Otho  of  Wormsfeld  ...  978-982 
Henry  I.  (2nd  time)  982-989 

Henry  H 989-995 

Otho  of  Wormsfeld  (2nd 

time)  ...  ...       995-1004 

Conrad  I.  of  Wormsfeld  1004-1012 
Adalbero  of  Eppenstein  1012-1035 
Conrad  I.  of  Wormsfeld  1035-1039 


{Interregnimi)  ...  1039-1047 

Welfof  Altorf  ...  1047-1055 

Conrad  HI 1057-1059 

Berthold  of  Zoehringen  1059-1073 
Markhardt  of  Eppenstein, 

Hereditary  Duke  ...  1073-1076 

Liutold  1076-1090 

Henry,    Margrave     of 

Istria  1090-1122 


HOUSE   OF    ORTENBURG  (1122-I269). 
I122-II24 


Henry  IV 

Engelbert,  Margrave  of 

Istria            1124-I134 

Ulrich  I.    ,     1134-I143 

Henry  V 1143-I161 

Hermann        1161-1181 

Ulrich  II 1181-1201 


Carinthia  is  annexed  to  Austria. 


Bernard  1201-1256 

Ulrich  III 1256-1269 

Premysl  Otokar  II.   ...  1269-1276 

Rudolph  of  Hapsburg  1276-1285 
Menhardt,     Count     of 

Tyrol  1 286-1 295 

Henry,  Count  of  Tyrol  1295-1335 


BOHEMIA. 

DUKES 

(family    OF 

THE    PREMYSLIDES). 

Premysl  (Libusa) 

750 

Spitihnev  II 

1055-1061 

Pagan  Princes 

750-870 

Vratislav  II.  (King)  ... 

1061-1092 

Borivoj 

870-894 

Bretislav  II 

1092-1110 

Spitihnev  I.    ... 

894-9 I 2 

Borivoj  II. 

1110-1120 

Vratislav 

912-925 

Vladislav  I.     ... 

1120-1125 

Vacslav  the  Saint 

925-935 

Sobeslav  I. 

1125-1140 

Boleslav  I. 

936-967 

Vladislav  H.  (King)  ... 

1140-1173 

Boleslav  II 

967-999 

Sobeslav  II.   ... 

1173-1189 

Boleslav  III 

.          999-1003 

Konrad  Otho 

1189-1191 

Jaromir 

.       IOO4-IOI2 

Vacslav  II. 

1191-1192 

Oldric 

.       IOI2-IO37 

Premysl  Otokar  I. 

1 192-1230 

Betislav  I 

■       IO37-IO55 

640 


HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 


KINGS. 

Vacslav  1 1230-1253       Vacslav  III 1305-1306 

Premysl  Otokar  II.   ...      1253-1278        Rudolf  of  Habsburg ...  1306-1307 

Vacslav  II 1278-1305        Henry  of  Carinthia  ...  1307-1310 


HOUSE   OF    LUXEMBURG. 


PROVISIONAL    GOVERNMENTS. 


John 

Charles  I.  (IV.) 
Vacslav  IV.    ... 


I 3 10-1346 

I 346- I 3 78 
1378-1419 


Sigismund 
Albert  of  Austria 
Vladislav  the  Posthu- 
mous 
George  of  Podiebrad 


1419-1437 
I 43 7- I 439 

1439-1457 
1458-1471 


Wladyslaw  II. 


THE   JAGIELLOS. 
1471-1516    I    Louis  II. 


The  dynasty  of  the  Habsburgs  from  Ferdinand  I. 


1516-1526 


KINGDOM   OF   HUNGARY. 


Arpad 
Geiza  I. 

Stephen  the  Saint 
Peter  I. 
Andrew  I. 
Bela  I.  ... 

Ladislas  the  Saint 
Koloman 
Stephen  II.     ... 
Bela  II.,  the  Blind 
Geiza  II. 


HOUSE   OF   ARPAD. 


972—997 
997-1038 
I 038- I 046 
I 046- I 060 
1060- 1063 
1063-1095 
1095-1 114 
II14-II31 
1131-1141 
II41-I160 


Stephen   III.  and  IV.  1161-1173 

Bela  III 1173-1196 

Emerich           1196-1204 

Andrew  II 1204-1235 

Bela  IV 1235-1270 

Stephen  V 1270-1272 

Ladislas  the  Cuman  ...  1 272-1290 

Andrew  III 1290-1301 

Vacslav  III.  of  Bohemia  1301-1305 

Otho  of  Bavaria         ...  1305-1307 


Charles  Robert 


HOUSE    OF   ANJOU. 
1 308- 1 342   I    Louis  the  Great 


1342-1382 


ELECTED    KINGS. 


Sigismund  of  Luxemburg  1382-1437 
Albert  of  Austria  ...  1438-1439 
Wladyslaw  of  Poland        1440- 1444 


Vladislavthe  Posthumous  1439-1457 
Mathias  Corvinus      ...     1457-1490 


Wladyslaw  II. 


THE   JAGELLONS. 
1490-15 16    I    Louis  II. 


The  dynasty  of  the  Habsburgs  from  Ferdinand  I. 
Szapolyai,  anti-king      ...         ...         ...     154° 


1516-1526 


TABLE   OF  SOVEREIGNS. 


641 


GRAND   PRINCES   (VOIEVODES)    OF   TRANSYLVANIA 
1526-1540 


John  Szapolyai 

John    Sig^mund    Sza 

polyai          1 540-1 57 1 

Stephen  Batory  ...  1571-1575 
Christopher  Batory  ...  1 575-1 581 
Sigismond  Batory  ...  1581-1599 
Andrew  Batory  ...  1599-1604 
.Sigismond  Batory  (se- 
cond time)  .,  ...  1601 
Stephen  Bocskai        ...  1604- 1606 


Sigismund  Rakoczy ...     1606-1608 
Gabriel  Batory  ...      1608-1613 

Gabriel  Bethlen  (Bethlen 


Gabor) 
George  Rakoczy 
George  Rakoczy  II. 
John  Kemeny 
Michael  Apafy 
Emile  Tokoly 


Austrian  occupation  from  1691  to  1706. 
Francis  Rakoczy,  1706-17 11. 


1613-1629 
I 629- I 648 
1648-1660 
I 660- I 662 
I 662- I 689 
1 689- 1 69 1 


CROATIA. 

PRINCES. 

Ljudevit 

823 

Kresimir 

900-9 I 2 

Borna  ... 

823  830 

Miroslav 

912-917 

Porin   ... 

8^0  836 

Tomislav 

917-940 

Zdeslav 

868-S79 

Godimir 

940-958 

Branimir 

...          879-892 

Kresimir  II.    ... 

958-970 

Mutimir 

892-900 

KINGS. 

Drzislav 

970-1000 

Slavisa 

.     1074-1076 

Kresimir  I.     ... 

...      IOOO-1035 

Demeter  Zvonimir     .. 

.     1076-1087 

Stephen  I. 

...      1035-1056 

Stephen  II 

.     10S7-1090 

Peter  Kresimir  II. 

...      1056-1074 

Personal  union 

with  Hungary 

HOUSE   OF   HABSBURG. 


Rudolph  I.,  Emperor 
of  Germany 

Albert  I.,  Duke  of 
Austria  (Emperor  in 
1298)  

Leopold  (1326),  and 
Frederic  the  Hand- 
some (1330),  Dukes 
of  Austria. 


1273-1291 


1 283-1 308 


Frederic,  King  of  the 
Romans  from  1 3 14, 
with  Louis  of  Ba- 
varia. 

Albert  the  Wise 

Rudolph  the  Founder 


1330-1358 
1358-1365 


2    T 


642 


HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HVWGARY. 


Ai.BERTiNE  Branch. 


Leoi'oldine  Branch. 


Austria, 
properly  so  called. 


Styria,  Carinthia,  Carniola,  Tyrol,  Outer  Austria. 


Leopold  HI. 


Styria,  Carinthia,  Carniola, 

Trieste. 

Capital :  Gratz. 


AlbertllL.with 

the        Plaited 

Hair  ...  1365-1395 
Albert  IV.  1395-1404 
Albert     V.      (in 

1438    King  of 

Bohemia    and 

Hungary,  and  Ernest     ...   1411-1424 

Emperor       of  Albert  VI.     1424-1463 

Germany)  1404-1439  '  Frederic  V.    1463-1493 
Vladislav  thePos- 

thumous,King 

of       Bohemia 

and  Hungary 

I 439-1457 


1365-1386 


Tyrol,  Outer 

Austria. 

Capital:  Innsbriick. 


Frederic  IV.  (Empty 


Purse) 

Sieismund 


1411-1438 

1438-1487 


The  Emperor  Frederic  V.,  of  Styria,  under  the  title  of  Frederic  IV., 
reunites  all  the  domains  of  his  House. 


Maximilian,  Emperor  of  Germany 


1493-1519 


Spanish  Branch. 
Charles  V,       1517-1556 


Austrian  Branch. 


Philip  II. 
Philip  III. 
Philip  IV. 
Charles  II. 


1556-1598 
1598-1621 
1621-1665 
I 665- I 700 


The  second  son  of  the 
House  of  Habsburg- 
Lorraine  inherits  the 
throne  of  Tuscany. 

Francis  of  Lorraine 
(Emperor  in 
I74S)    .-     1737-1765 


Ferdinand  I.  (King  of  Bohemia 

and 

Hungary    in    1526,    Emperor   in 

1556)          1519-1564 

Bohemia,  Hun- 
gary, Austria. 

Styria,  Carinthia, 
Carniola,  Gorica. 

Tyrol  and 
Outer  Austria. 

Maximilian 

Charles  II. 

Ferdinand 

II.  (Em- 
peror) 

1 564-1 590 
Ferdinand 

I 564-1 595 

I 564-1 576 
Rudolph  II. 

1576-1612 
Mathias 

(Emperor 
in  1619) 

1612-1619 

Ferdinand  of  S 
all  the  Austr 

tyria  (Emperor 
ian  domains  exce 

n  16 19)  reunites 
pt  Tyrol. 

TABLE   OF  SOVEREIGNS. 


643 


Tuscany. 

Leopold  I.  (11.) 
(Emperor  in 
1790)    ...     1 765- 1 790 

Ferdinand       III., 

1790    and    1814-1824 

Leopold  IL      1824-1859 

Ferdinand  IV.  1859 


House  of  Habsburg- 
este  at  modena. 

Ferdinand  1S03-1806 
Francis  IV.  1814-1846 
Francis  V.        1846- 1859 


Austrian  Branch. 


Bohemia,  Austria,  Hungary. 


Ferdinand  III. 

1637-1657 
Leopold  I.     1657-1705 

Joseph  I. 
Charles  VI.  ... 


Tyrol. 


Leopold  V.     1623-1632 
Ferdinand  Charles 

1632-1662 

1705-1711 

1711-1740 


Habsburg-Lorraine 

jMaria  Theresa  and  Francis  I. 
Joseph  II.  (Emperor  in  1765) 
Leopold  II.  ... 
Francis  II.  (Emperor  of  Austria  ii 

1806)         

Ferdinand  IV.  (ist)  

Francis  Joseph  ( I  St)  


1 740- 1 780 
1780-1790 
1 790-1792 

1 792-1835 
1835-1848 


HOUSE    OF   AUSTRIA   IN    PARMA. 


Charles  IV.  (Emperor) 
Maria  Theresa 
Maria  Louisa 


1735-1740 
1740-174S 
1814-1847 


HOUSE   OF   AUSTRIA    IN    MILAN. 

From  Charles  VI.  to  Francis  II.  ...         ...     1 713-1796 

And  from  1815  to  1859. 


HOUSE   OF   AUSTRIA   IN   VENICE. 

Francis  II ...     1797-1805 

Francis  II. ,  Ferdinand  IV\,  and  Francis  Joseph      1S15-1866 


LOSSES  AND  GAINS  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  HABS- 
BURG  FROM  RUDOLPH  OF  HABSBURG  TO 
THE   PRESENT   TIME. 


1282.  Rudolph  I.  invests  his  sons 
Albert  and  Rudolph  with  Aus- 
tria, Styria,  and  Carniola. 

1 291.  Albert  I.  unites  to  these  pro- 
vinces the  hereditary  domains  of 
Outer  Austria  (the  Vorlande). 

1 30 1.  He  acquires  the  Margraviate 
of  Bureau  in  Suabia. 


1324.  The  County  of  Ptirt  or  Fer- 
rette. 

1326.  The  Domains  of  Kyburg. 

1330.  Leopold  acquires  Breisach, 
Schaffhausen,  Rheinfelden,  Neu- 
burg,  and  Rappenchwyl. 


1335.   Carinthia. 

1363.  Tyrol. 

1365.   The  County  of  Feldkirch. 

1367.   Breisgau. 

1374.   The  property  of  the  Counts  of 

Gorica  in  Carniola. 
1376.  The  County  of  Bludenz. 
1379.  The  Baillywick  of  Suabia. 

1 38 1.  Hohenberg. 

1382.  Trieste  places  itself  under  the 
protection  of  the  Habsburgs. 

1401.   Frederic  IV.  of  Tyrol  inherits 
the  County  of  Seckingen. 


1451.   Part  of  Bregenz. 


1315.  The  Forest  Towns  throw  off 
the  Austrian  yoke. 


1332-1351.  Lucerne,     Claris,    and 
Zug  gain  their  freedom. 


1415-1416.   Argovia,    Bremgarten, 

Sursee,  and  Baden. 
1423.   Kyburg  pledged  to  Zurich. 


LOSSES  AND  GAINS  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  HABSBURG.      645 


1456.  The  County  of  Cilly. 

1461.   Thurgovia. 

1465.  The  Landgraviate  of  Nellen- 
burg. 

1482.  Maximilian  occupies  the  Bur- 
gundian  States  in  the  name  of 
his  son,  Philip  the  Handsome. 

1500.  The  Counties  of  Gorica,  of 
Mitterburg,  and  the  Pusterthal. 

1503.  Tyrol  enlarged  in  conse- 
quence of  a  treaty  with  Bavaria. 

1 5 16.  Enlarged  in  consequence  of  a 
treaty  with  Venice. 

1519.  Ferdinand  I.  buys  the  County 
of  Wurtemberg. 

1523.  The  rest  of  Bregenz. 

1526.  The  Kingdom  of  Bohemia, 
the  Margraviate  of  Moravia,  the 
greater  part  of  Silesia,  and  the 
two  Lusatias,  Hungary,  and  its 
dependencies. 


LOSSES. 

1452.  The  County  of  Kyberg. 


1687.  The  Principalities  of  Liegnitz, 
Brieg,  and  Wohlau  annexed. 


1699.  The  Treaty  of  Carlowitz 
restores  Eastern  Hungary  and 
Transylvania  to  Austria. 

1708.  Joseph  I.  takes  possession  of 
the  Duchy  of  Mantua,  a  fief  of 
the  Empire  left  without  heirs. 

1 714.  The  Treaty  of  Rastadt  gives 
Charles  VI.  possession  of  the 
Low  Countries,  Milan,  Naples, 
Sardinia,  and  Brisach. 

1 718.  The  Treaty  of  Passarowitz 
(Poszarevac)  restores  the  Banats 
of  Temes  and  of  Krajova,  and 
gives  part  of  Servia  and  Bosnia 
to  Austria. 

1720.  Sardinia  is  exchanged  for 
Sicily. 


1526.  Hungary  broken  up  :  Sza- 
polyai,  Voievode  of  Transyl- 
vania. 

1526-1566.  Central  Hungary  and 
Slavonia  in  the  hands  of  the 
Turks. 

1534.  Ferdinand  I.  gives  up  the 
County  of  Wurtemburg. 

1635.  The  two  Lusatias  given  up  to 
the  Elector  of  Saxony. 

1648.  Cession  of  Alsace,  Briesgau, 
and  Sundgau. 


1690.  Ortenau    given    up 
House  of  Baden. 


to    the 


646 


HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 


GAINS. 

1735.  The  Treaty  of  Vienna  gives 

Austria  Parma  and  Placentia. 


LOSSES. 
1735.  The  Treaty  of  Vienna  gives 
Tortona  and  Novara  to  Sardinia, 
and    the   Two   Sicilies   to   Don 
Carlos,  the  Infant  of  Spain. 


1740.  On  the  death  of  Charles  VI. 
the  Austrian  possessionsamounted 
altogether  to  10,07571  square 
German  miles. 


1759-S0.  Austria  acquires  Ho- 
henems,  Falkenstein,  the  Or- 
tenau,  etc.,  in  Germany. 

1765.  Tuscany,which  was  exchanged 
for  Lorraine  in  1 736  by  Francis  I ., 
is  made  the  inheritance  of  the 
second  son  of  the  House  of 
Habsburg-Lorraine. 

1772.  The  County  of  Zips  (Szepes) 
and  Galicia. 

1775.   The  Bukovina. 

1779.  The  district  of  the  Inn. 

1782.  Further  acquisitions  on  the 
Inn. 

1784.  The  Principalities  of  Castig- 
lione  and  Solferino,  and  the 
Lordship  of  Asch  in  Bohemia. 

1791.  Treaty  of  Sistova  :  Leopold 
gains  Old  Orsova  and  the  district 
of  the  Unna. 

1 796.  Third  partition  of  Poland  : 
acquisition  of  Western  Galicia. 

1797.  Treaty  of  Campo-Formio  : 
acquisition  of  Venetian  territory, 
Istria,  Dalmatia,  and  the  Gulf  of 
Cattaro. 


1739.  By  the  Treaty  of  Belgrade 
Austria  restores  Servia,  Bosnia, 
and  the  Banate  of  Krajova  to 
the  Turks. 


1742.   By 
Maria 


the    Treaty   of    Breslau 

Theresa    gives    up    tlie 

greater  part  of  Silesia  and  the 

County  of  Kladsko  to  Prussia. 

1743.   Vigevano     and      Siccomaria 

ceded  to  Sardinia. 
1748.   By    the    Treaty    of    Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  Parma,  Placentia,  and 
Guastalla  ceded  to  Don  Philip. 


1797.  Loss  of  Belgium,  Briesgau, 
the  Duchies  of  Milan  and 
Mantua. 


LOSSES  A XD  GAINS  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  HABSBURG.      647 


1803.  Trent  and  Brixen. 

1804.  Lindau,  Rothenfels,  Blume- 
neck,  etc. 

1805.  Treaty  of  Pressburg  (Pos- 
zony) :  Salzburg,  Berclitolsgaden, 
the  Matreithal,  Zillerthal,  and 
Brixenthal  gained. 


1 8 14.  Re-annexation  of  the  northern 
part  of  Tyrol  and  Vorarlberg. 

18 1 5.  The  Treaty  of  Vienna  gives 
back  to  Austria  the  Lombardo- 
Venetian  Kingdom,  Gorica, 
Gradesca,  Trieste,  the  whole  of 
Istria,  Dalmatia,  Ragusa,  \'ene- 
tian  Albania,  Carniola,  Ricka 
(Fiume),  Croatia,  the  Southern 
Tyrol,  the  Matreithal,  the  Circle 
of  Villach,  Tarnopol,  and 
Czortkow. 

1816.  Treaty  of  Munich  :  Salzburg, 
the  Circle  of  the  Inn,  and  part 
of  the  Circle  of  Hausruck  and 
of  the  Zillerthal  and  Brixenthal, 
are  given  back  to  Austria. 

1846.  The  Republic  of  Cracow 
annexed. 


LOSSES. 

1801.  Treaty  of  Luneville  :  cession 
of  the  Adige  districts,  Falken- 
stein,  and  the  Frickthal. 

180^.   The  Ortenau. 


1S05.  Treaty  of  Pressburg  (Pos- 
zony)  :  Austria  cedes  Venice, 
Istria,  Dalmatia,  and  Cattaro 
to  the  Kingdom  of  Italy  ;  Tyrol 
and  Vorarlberg  to  Bavaria  ; 
Outer  Austria  to  Wurtemberg 
and  Bavaria. 

1807.   Montefalcone  ceded. 

1809.  Treaty  of  Vienna  :  Carniola, 
the  Circle  of  Villach,  Gorica, 
Trieste,  the  coast  of  Hungary, 
and  Croatia  as  far  as  the  Save, 
are  ceded  to  France  ;  Salzburg, 
Berchtolsgaden,  the  district  of 
the  Inn,  and  part  of  that  of 
Hausruck,  to  Bavaria  ;  Western 
Galicia,  Cracow,  and  the  Circle 
of  Zamosc,  to  the  Grand  Duchy 
of  Warsaw  ;  the  detached  po.s- 
sessions  of  Bohemia  in  Lusatia 
definitely  pass  over  to  Saxony. 

1810.  Readjustment  of  the  Galician 
frontier  :  Russia  obtains  the 
Circle  of  Tarnopol, 


648  HISTORY  OF  AUSTRO-HUNGARY. 

GAINS.  LOSSES. 

1859.  The  greater  part  of  Lombarcly 
given   up   to   the    Kingdom    of 
Italy. 
1866.  The  rest   of  Lombardy  and 
Venetia  given  up  to  the  Kingdom 
of  Italy. 
1878.  Temporary     occupation      of 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina. 

Austro-tlungary  now  contains  an  area  of  261,649  English  square  miles. 


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IN  DE  X 


Abdul  Keiim  Pacha,  60 1 
Abensberg,  defeat  of,  433 
Academy    of    Sciences    at    Vienna 

founded,  522 
Achmet  II.,  326 

III.,  342 

Adalbert  (Vojtec),  bishop  of  Prague, 

64 ;  baptizes  Stephen  of  Hungary, 

64  ;    murdered,  92  ;    his  remains 

carried  to  Prague,  93 

the  Victorious,  129 

Adalram,  archbishop  of  Salzburg,  42 
Adam  of  Veleslavin,  290 
Adrian  II.,  44 
Adrianople,  battle  of,  21 
A.E.I.O.U.,  Monogram  of  Frede- 
rick IV.,  153 
^-Eneas  Sylvius,  189,  198,  209,  237 
Agram  (Zagreb),  centre  of  the  Illy- 

rian  literary  movement,  500 
Agron,  king  of  Illyrian  tribes,  12 
Aguntum,  16 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  treaty  of,  352 
Ala,  Samuel,  71 
Alani,  17 
Albania,  409 

Albert  I.,  118  ;  chosen  emperor,  142 
the  Wise,  143  ;  treaty  of  No- 

fels,  144 
iV.,      surnamed      I\Iirabilia 

Mundi,  149 
v.,  chosen  Emperor,  King  of 

Bohemia  and  Hungary,  150 

,  Archduke,  570 

(with  the  plaited  hair),  founder 

of  the  Albertine  Branch,  149 


Albertine  Branch,  149,  150 

Alboin,  23 

Alemanni,  21,  23 

Alessandria,  capitulation  of,  412 

Alexander  I.  (of  Russia),  426,  446, 
459 

II.,  558 

VI.,  pope,  214 

— — of  Battenberg,  Prince  of  Bul- 
garia; war  against  Servia,  610; 
his  abdication,  611 

the  Great,  12 

Almos,  74,  75 

Alvinzy,  406,  484 

Ambras,  castle  of,  263,  296 

Museum,  263,  276 

Ambrones,  12 

Ampringen,  334 

Anabaptists,  258 

Anastasius  Grun,  522 

Ancona,  413,  477 

Andrassy,  Julius,  540,  541,  593, 
594,  601,  602 

Andrew  I.,  King  of  Hungary,  72 

II.,  79  ;  joins  the  crusade,  80  ; 

grants  Golden  Bull,  81 

III.,  86 

of  Cesky  Brod,  167 

Anjou,  House  of,  in  Hungary,  21S- 
223 

Apafy,  Michael,  332,  338 

Apor,  Ladislas,  Voievode  of  Tran- 
sylvania, 219 

Aquileia,  foundation  of,  12 ;  14, 
16,  19  ;  Council  of,  20 

Aquincum  (Buda),  15 

Arany,  515 

Arbe,  island  in  the  Adriatic,  40S 

Arcadius,  22 


650 


INDEX. 


Areola,  406 

Arminius,  17 

Arndt,  poet,  430 

Arnulf  of  Pannonia,  48  ;  struggles 

■  against  Svatopluk,  57  j  alliance 
with  Bohemia,  89 

Arpad,  57  ;  death  of,  60;  dynasty 
of,  59-88 

Arsenius  Tsernoievitch  (Cernoje- 
vic),  338,  344 

Aspern,  434 

Attila,  22 

Auersperg,  councillor  to  Leopold 
II.,  267,  272 

,  Adolphus,  594 

,  Charles,  580 

Augsburg,  defeat  of  Hungarians, 
60  ;  confession  of,  2S8,  289 

Augusta,  John,  a  Bohemian  brother, 
thrown  into  prison,  288 

Augustus  III.  of  Saxony,  350 

Aurelian,  19 

Ausgleich,  574,  577 

Ausschvveitz  (Osviecim),  360 

Austerlitz  (Slavkov),  426 

Austria,  origin  of  its  name,  127  ; 
march  of  Austria,  127  ;  the  Ba- 
benbergs,  128  ;  a  separate  duchy, 
132  ,  gains  Styria  and  part  of 
Carniola,  132 ;  laws  under  the 
Babenbergs,  136  ;  trade  restric- 
tions, 139  ;  house  of  Habsburg, 
141  ;  early  princes,  141-144  ;  ac- 
quires Tyrol  and  Carinthia,  147  ; 
division  of  Austria,  149 ;  Alber- 
tine  branch,  149-150;  Leopoldine 
branch,  150 ;  loss  of  Switzer- 
land, 151  ;  Austria  an  archduchy, 
152  ;  monogram  of  Austria,  153  ; 
division  of  in  1792,  401  ;  army, 
403  ;  loses  Belgium,  404 ;  ac- 
quires eastern  Galicia,  405  ;  loses 
Lombardy,  406 ;  gains  Venice 
and  Dalmatia,  406  ;  Bonaparte's 
victories,  407  ;  preliminaries  of 
Loben,  408 ;  peace  of  Campo 
Formio,  408  ;  congress  of  Ras- 
tadt,  410 ;  assassination  of  French 
representatives,  41 1  ;  alliance 
with  Russia,  41 1 ;  Marengo,  412 ; 
Hohenlinden,  412  ;  loss  of  terri- 
tory,4i3;  peace  of  Luneville,  413; 


condition  of  Austria  after  Lune- 
ville, 414  ;  finances,  418  ;  law, 
419 ;  Francis  takes  title  of  emperor 
of  Austria,  420  ;  treaty  of  Press- 
burg,  423  ;  capitulation  of  Ulm, 
425 ;  Vienna  captured,  426  ; 
peace  of  Pressburg,  427  ;  sur- 
render of  title  of  Roman  emperor, 
428;  campaign  of  1809,  431; 
insurrection  in  Tyrol,  432  ;  loss 
of  Vienna,  434  ;  treaty  of  Schon- 
brunn,  436 ;  alliance  with  Na- 
poleon, 442  ;  financial  condition, 
443  ;  laws,  444  ;  Russian  cam- 
paign, 447  ;  treaty  with  Prussia 
and  Russia,  450 ;  campaign  of 
18 1 3,  451  ;  Austrians  in  France, 
456 ;    peace    of    Fontainebleau, 

457  ,  treaty  of  Paris,  457  ;  re- 
storation of  Austrian  house  in 
Italy,  458 ;  congress  of  Vienna, 

458  ;  war  resumed,  461  ;  Water- 
loo, 462  ;  condition  of  Austria 
in  1815,  462  ;  second  treaty  of 
Paris,  462  ;  character  of  Francis 
II.,  466  ;  his  reactionary  policy, 
467  ;  congress  of  Verona,  471  ; 
Eastern  affairs,  471-476  ;  position 
towards  Poland,  476  ;  towards 
Italy,  477 ;  towards  Germany, 
478 ;  financial  situation,  479  ; 
public  opinion  under  Ferdinand 
IV.,  521  ;  parliament  of  Vienna, 
542 ;  diet  of  Kromerice,  abdi- 
cation of  Ferdinand  IV.,  546  ; 
Francis  Joseph,  547  ;  Crimean 
war,  557  ;  treaty  of  Paris,  558  ; 
battle  of  Solferino,  559  ;  attempts 
at  constitutional  government, 
561  ;  appointment  of  Schmer- 
ling,  562  ;  opposition  of  the  na- 
tionalities to  centralizing  reforms, 

564  ;     insurrection     in     Poland, 

565  ;  wars  against  Prussia  and 
Italy,  567  ;  Schleswig  Plolstein 
question,  568 ;  loss  of  Venetia, 
570;  peace  of  Prague,  570;  situa- 
tion after  Sadowa,  572 ;  the 
Ausgleich,  574 ;  liberal  mea- 
sures, 580;  military  law,  581  ; 
continued  struggles  with  the  na- 
tionalities, 582-588 


INDEX. 


651 


Austro-Hungary,  formation  of,  1-3  ; 
natural  frontiers,  3,  4 ;  various 
nationalities,  5  ;  titles  of  emperor, 
9  ;  statistics,  622-637  ;  literature 
of,  598 ;  efforts  towards  federation, 
589  ;  Franco-German  war,  589  ; 
Hohenwart  ministry,  590  ;  nego- 
ciations  with  Bohemia,  59°  ; 
federation  checked,  593  ;  present 
condition  of  Austria,  594-599 ; 
condition  of  education,  597  ! 
Eastern  Question  re-opened,  in- 
surrection of  Bosnia  and  Herze- 
govina, triple  alliance,  negocia- 
tions  with  Roumania,  discontent 
of  the  Porte,  600  ;  treaty  of  San 
Stefano,  602 ;  of  Berlin,  603  ; 
occupation  of  Bosnia,  603-609  ; 
aids  Servia,  610;  her  foreign 
policy,  611  ;  alliance  with  Italy, 
611;  the  Taaffe  ministry,  612; 
policy  towards  Bohemia,  613  ; 
towards  Hungary,  614  ;  towards 
Croatia,  615  ;  organization  of, 
617  ;  of  Cisleithania,  618  ;  of 
Hungary,  621  ;  Croatia,  621  ; 
army,  622  ;  navy,  626  ;  popula- 
tion, 626  ;  natural  resources, 
629  ;  means  of  communication, 
631  ;  trade,  631  ;  finances,  633  ; 
religion,  634;  intellectual  culture, 

635 
Avars,  21,  23,  24,  27,  30,  52. 


Babenberg,  house  of,  derivation  of 
name,  128  ;  Austria  under  the, 
127-140;  Leopold  I.,  128; 
Leopold  H.,  the  Handsome,  129  ; 
Henry  I.,  129;  Ernest  the  Vali- 
ant, 129  ;  Leopold  HL,  130  ; 
canonized,    130;    Leopold    IV., 

130  ;  gets  possession  of  Bavaria, 

131  ;  Henry  II.,  lasomirgott,  131 ,: 
marries  Gertrude  of  Bavaria,  13 1  ; 
goes  on  crusade  131  ;  the  privik- 
gium  }?iinus,  132  ;  founds  Vienna, 

132 ;  Leopold  V.  the  Virtuous 
gains  Styriaand  part  of  Carniola, 

132  ;     goes     on      crusade      and 


quarrels  with  Richard  Cceur  de 
Lion,  133;  Frederick  I.,  133  ; 
Leopold  VI.,  the  Proud,  goes  on 
crusade,  133  ;  his  influence,  134  ; 
improves  Vienna,  134;  dies  in 
Italy,  134  ;  Frederick  the  Fighter, 
134  ;  wars  with  Hungary,  Bo- 
hemia, and  Germany,  135 ;  in- 
vasion of  the  Mongols,  135  ; 
death  of  Frederick,  136. 
Bach,   Alexander,    544,    552,    554, 

Bacsany,  translator  of  the  Marseil- 
laise, 484,  488 

Bajan,  27,  28 

Bajazet  II.,  241,  245 

Bakracz,  246 

Balbin,  496 

Ban  of  Croatia,  75 

Baraguay  d'Hilliers,  433 

Baroti,  the  poet,  482 

Barrier  (treaty),  277 

Basle,  council  of,  193  ;  peace  of, 
252  ;  treaty  of,  405 

Bathyany,  534,  536,  538,  539,  440 

Batory,  Christopher,  319,  325 

,  Stephen,  321 

,  Sigismund,  325 

,  Andrew,  326 

,  Gabriel,  327-33° 

Baton,  84 

Bavaria,  kingdom  of,  427 

Beauharnais,  435 

Bedrich  of  Straznice,  202 

Bela  I.,  king  of  Hungaiy,  72 

II.,  the  Blind,  76 

—  in.,  77 

-IV.,  83-86;  105 

Belcredi,  566,  573,  574 

Belgiojoso,  326 

Belgium,  403  ;  loss  of,  404 

Belgrade,  captured  by  Hungary  from 
Servia,  219  ;  siege  by  Hunyadi, 
234 ;  siege  by  Prince  Eugene, 
343  ;  treaty  of,  347  ;  captured  by 
Loudon,  393 

Bellegarde,  453 

Belle-Isle,  Marshal,  349,  365 

Bern,  539,  540,  541,  545 

Benedek,  "the  Falcon  of  the 
Vistula,"  507,  569 

Berchtolsgaden,  413,  463 


652 


INDEX. 


Berebistas,    king   of    the    Dacians, 

14,  17 

Berlin,  treaty  of,  603  ;  clause  con- 
cerning Bosnia  and  Herzegovina, 
604 

Bernadotte,  ambassador  to  Vienna, 
411 

Berszenyi,  poet,  486 

Berthier,  443 

Bessenyi,  poet,  395 

Bethlen  Gabor,  299,  300,  307,  325, 
326,  328,  329 

Beust,  567,  573,  578,  579,  594 

Biberach,  412 

Bismarck,  567,  569,  593 

Bisson,  433,  438 

Blasin  (Balasfalva),  535 

Bleiweiss,  501 

Blucher,  461 

Blum,  Robert,  545 

Bocchesi,  insurrection  of  the,  585 

Bochnia,  360 

Bocskai,  Stephen,  heads  revolt  in 
Transylvania,  326 ;  chosen  prince, 
alliance  with  Turks,  326 

Boethy,  514 

Bohemia,  geography,  4 ;  ethno- 
graphy, 5-7  ;  importance  of  the 
kingdom,  lO  ;  origin  (see  Boii, 
Chekhs),  reign  of  Samo,  28,  30; 
legendary  princes,  40  ;  first 
Christian  prince,  Spytihnev ; 
Vratislav,  89  ;  St.  Vacslav,  90  ; 
Boleslav  I.,  91 ;  Boleslav  II.,  91 ; 
see  of  Prague  founded,  91  ;  Bre- 
tislav,  92;  Spytihnev  II.,  93; 
triumph  of  Latin  Christianity,  94  ; 
Vratislav  II.,  first  king  of  Bohemia, 
gains  Lusatia,  94  ;  tribute  due  to 
emperor,  94 ;  granted  title  of 
king,  94;  Bretislav  II.  appeals  to 
Germany  as  a  fief,  95  ;  Sobeslav 
I.  declares  war  against  empire, 
96 ;  emperor  renounces  his  claims, 
96;  Vladislav  II.,  96;  goes  on 
crusade,  97 ;  war  with  Frederick 
Barbarossa  for  Silesia,  97  ;  with 
the  Turks,  97  ;  abdicates,  97  ;  title 
of  king  suppressed,  97  ;  condition 
of  Bohemia  in  twelfth  century, 
98 ;  Premysl  Otokar  crowned, 
99  ;  law  of  primogeniture,   loo  ; 


Vacslav  the  One-eyed,  loi  ; 
German  influence,  loi  ;  wars 
with  Austria,  lOi  ;  invasion  of 
Tartars,  loi  ;  Premysl  Otokar 
II.,  103  ;  position  of  Bohemia 
towards  the  German  empire, 
120  ;  institutions,  122  ;  John  of 
Luxemburg,  155-160;  Charles 
IV.,  161-164;  Vacslav  IV.,  164; 
revolts  of  his  nobles,  165,  166  ; 
condition  of  Bohemia,  167  ;  the 
religions  movement,  168  ;  John 
Hus,  169  ;  Council  of  Constance, 
173;  the  Utraquist  sect,  177; 
Council  of  Prague,  I77  >  Hussite 
Wars,  180-200  ;  battle  of  Ousti, 
190;  anarchy  in  Bohemia,  194; 
council  of  Basle,  195  ;  battle  of 
Cesky  Brod,  198;  iheConipactata, 
199  ;  results  of  Hussite  wars,  200; 
death  of  Sigismund  and  extinction 
of  line  of  Luxemburg,  202  ;  Albert 
v.,  203  ;  George  of  Podiebrad, 
205  ;  Vladislav  crowned,  206  ; 
George  elected,  208 ;  receives 
investiture  from  emperor,  208 ; 
war  with  Germany  and  Hungary, 
210,  211  ;  death  and  character  of 
George,  212;  Wladyslawjagiello, 
213 ;  peace  of  Olomouc,  213  ; 
Wladyslaw  elected  king  of  Hun- 
gary, 215  ;  Louis,  215  ;  towns 
admitted  to  vote,  the  Reforma- 
tion, 216;  internal  dissension  of 
Bohemia,  217;  battle  of  Mohacs, 
217  ;  rule  of  the  Austrian  kings, 
283  ;  growth  of  royal  power, 
285  ;  revolts,  persecutions,  287  ; 
letter  of  majesty,  291  ;  the  de- 
fenestration of  Prague,  295  ;  the 
thirty  directors,  296  ;  Elector 
Palatine  chosen  king,  299  ;  battle 
of  White  Mountain,  300 ;  Fer- 
dinand's revenge,  301-305  ;  emi- 
gration of  Protestants,  305  ; 
Thirty  Years' War,  306;  Wallen- 
stein,  307  ;  Peace  of  Westphalia, 
309  ;  Decay  of  Bohemia,  310  ; 
reign  of  Maria  Theresa,  364  ; 
Charles  of  Bavaria,  anti-king, 
364;  reign  of  Joseph  II.,  396, 
397;  of  Leopold   II.,  491  ;   re- 


INDEX. 


653 


vival  of  Slavonic  literature,  493 ; 
Bohemian  diet  from  1840  to 
184S,  510;  development  of 
public  spirit,  Havilcek,  511-513; 
revolution  of,  1848,  527  ;  Slav 
congress,  529 ;  bombardment  of 
Prague,  530  ;  restoration  of  abso- 
lute government,  548  ;  return  to 
constitutional  government,  561  ; 
iniquity  of  new  electoral  law, 
563  ;  persecution  of  the  press, 
565  ;  Bohemia  invaded  by  the 
Prussians,  569  ;  its  protest  against 
the  dual  government,  578;  decla- 
ration of  the  Chekh  deputies, 
582 ;  negociations  with  the  Ho- 
henwart  ministry,  590 ;  the  Fun- 
damental Articles,  592  ;  check  to 
federation,  593  ;  Bohemia's  atti- 
tude towards  the  Eastern  Ques- 
tion, 601  ;  present  condition, 
617-637 

Bohemian  Brothers,  union  of,  209, 
215,  290,  291,  302,  303,  386 

Boii,  12,  13,  26 

Boiorum  Deserta,  14 

Boldenyi,  23 

Boleslav  I.,  duke  of  Bohemia,  90 

II.,  91 

the   Brave,    king   of    Poland, 

92 

Borivoj,  duke  of  Bohemia,  41,  45 

Borut,  prince  of  the  Slovenes,  51 

Bosnia,  237,  338,  472,  600 

Bozetech,  125 

Bracislav,  Croat  prince,  128 

Brandenburg  sold  to  Frederick  of 
Hohenzollern,  190 

Brankovic  of  Servia,  228,  231,  233- 

235 
Braunau,  363 
Bregenz,  16 
Breisgau,  403,  427 
Breslau  (Vratislav),  207,  208,  210, 

301  ;    gives    up    its    old    name, 

Brestl,  his  financial  law,  58 1 
Bretislav  I.,  duke  of  Bohemia,  92  ; 
institution  of  primogeniture,  93 

II.,  95 

Brixen,  414,  427 
Brno,  199 


Brown,   Irish   soldier  in  service  of 

Austria,  355 
Bubna,  Austrian  general,  470 
Buda,  synod  of,  88  ;  court  of,  243  ; 

conquest  of,  249 
Buda-Pesth,  diet  at,  586 
Budejovice,  118,  184,  296,  297 
Bukowina,     acquired     by    Austria, 

361  ;    German  university  founded 

in,  597 
Bulgaria,  472,  602 
Buol-Schauenstein,  count,  557 
Buquoi,  297,  299,  301 
Burgundians,  19 
Butchery  of  Eperjes,  336 
Butler,  308 
Bytom,  117 


Cahera,  priest  and  friend  of  Luther, 
217 

Caldiero,  425 

Calixtins.     See  Utraquists. 

Campo  Formio,  peace  of,  40S 

Capistrano,  the  monk,  207,  234 

Carafa,  Jesuit,  303 

Caraffa,  Italian  general,  336 

Carinthia  becomes  the  propert)'  of 
Austria,  144,  251,  259,  438  ; 
Henry  of,  156,  160 

Carlists  in  Spain,  505 

Carlsbad,  congress  at,  470 

Carni,  12,  14 

Carniola,  15,  154,  159,  251  ;  pea- 
sant war,  254  ;  255,  259,  438 

Carnuntum,  20 

Carvajal,  205 

Caslav,  diet  of,  1S5  ;  204,  297  ; 
agrarian  revolt,  312 

Cassano,  battle  of,  412 

Castaldo  (condottiero),  319 

Castiglione,  406 

Catherine  II.,  357,  392 

of  Brandenburg,  329 

Cattaro,  453 

Caulaincourt,  French  ambassador, 

451 
Cavour,  represents  Piedmont  at  the 

Congress  of  Paris,  55S ;  alliance 

with  England,  559 


654 


INDEX. 


Cech,  Lech,  and  Rous,  26 

Celakovsky,  poet,  500 

Celeia  (Cilly),  15 

Celts,  12,  13 

Cesky  Brod,  198 

Cesy  de,  French  ambassador,  320 

Censorship  of  the  press,  419,  468, 
480,  522 

Champagny,  436 

Champaubert,  battle  of,  456 

Championnet,  424 

Charles  IV.,  king  of  Bohemia,  160  ; 
associated  with  his  father,  160  ; 
elected  emperor,  161  ;  reor- 
ganizes administration  of  Bo- 
hemia, 161  ;  founds  University 
of  Prague,  161  ;  the  Majestas 
Carolina,  162  ;  creates  arch- 
bishopric of  Prague,  163  ;  the 
Golden  Bull,  163 ;  his  con- 
flicts with  Rudolf  IV.,  146; 
treaty  of  inheritance  with  Austria, 
164 

" — v.,  253,  255 

VI.,  277  ;  Pragmatic  Sanction, 

279  ;  treaty  of  Vienna,  281  ; 
treaty  of  Belgrade,  281  ;  his  cha- 
racter, 281 

VII.  of  Bavaria,  350-352 

V.  of  Lorraine,  348 

X.  of  France,  475 

Albert  of  Bavaria,  350 

■   Albert,    king    of    Piedmont, 

532,  541 

,    Archduke,    407,    412,    423, 

426,  429,  430,  431,  433,  435 

,  duke  of  Brunswick,  476 

,  duke  of  Styria,  262 

Emmanuel,  of  Savoy,  299 

of  Durazzo,  220 

of  Lichtenstein,  301 

of  Schwarzenburg,  424,   446, 

ambassador  to  France,  448 

Robert  (of  Anjou),   86,   218, 

219 

the  Fat,  48 

the  Great,  41,  52 

Theodore,  of  Bavaria,  391 

Chasteler,  433 
Chatillon-sur-Seine,  conference  at, 

456 
Chaumont,  treaty  of,  456 


Chekh  Museum  founded  at  Prague, 
497 

Chekhs,  26  ;  alliance  with  Charles 
the  Great,  41  ;  become  Chris- 
tians, 41  ;  empire  of  Svatopluk, 
45  ;  his  death,  49 

Cherso,  island  in  the  Adriatic,  408 

Chotek,  Count,  description  of  Aus- 
trian misgovernment,  416 

Chotusic,  351 

Christianity,  19,  32,  37  ;  in  Bohemia, 
41  ;  in  Moravia,  42  ;  in  Carinthia, 
51  ;  in  Hungary,  64  ;  in  Poland, 
91 

Cilly,  Count,  234 

Cimbri  invade  the  south,  defeated 
at  Noreja,  13 

Cisleithania,  577,  583 

Clam-Gallas,  569 

Clam-Martinitz,  505,  582,  591 

Claudius,  Emperor,  19 

Clerfayt,  General,  404 

Cobenzel,  Joseph,  363  ;  at  congress 
of  Rastadt,  410;  411,  415,  423, 
424 

Collin,  Austrian  general,  507 

Colloredo,  308 

Commodus,  18 

Compadata,  the,  199,  200,  205, 
209,  214 

Confcrenzminisfen'icm,  417 

Conrad  of  Hohenstaufen,  130,  131 

Waldhauser,  168 

Constance,  Council  of,  151,  173; 
breaks  up,  179 

Constantine,  20 

Porphyrogenitus,  32,  56 

Constantius,  21 

Convention  of  St.  Vacslav,  216 

Corvina  library  founded  by  Ma- 
thias,  243  ;  601 

Cosmos,  dean  of  Prague,  125 

Councils  of  Spalato,  53,  54 

Cowley,  Lord,  559 

Cracow,  116,  360,  506-510,  531  ; 
Polish  Academy  at,  637 

Cressenbriinn,  105,  iio 

Croats,  statistics,  5  ;  geographical 
position,  8 ;  settle  in  the  valley 
of  the  Save,  30-32  ;  Slav  liturgy 
in  use,  44  ;  history  under  national 
dynasty,   53-56 ;    union  of   with 


INDEX. 


655 


Hungary,  74 ;  struggle  against 
the  Tartars,  84 ;  literary  revival 
at  Zagrel,  500 ;  Illyrism,  501  ; 
enforced  use  of  Magyar  language, 
518  ;  situation  as  regards  Hun- 
gary, 519  ;  discontent  under  Fer- 
dinand IV.,  534  ;  condition  under 
Francis  Joseph,  553  ;  agreement 
with  Hungary,  577  ;  refuse  to 
send  deputies  to  Pesth,  586 ; 
present  grievances,  587  ;  attitude 
of  Hungary  towards  them,  587 

Crown  of  St.  Stephen,  315  ;  brought 
to  Vienna,  394 

Csak  of  Trencsin,  219 

Csaky,  cardinal,  280 

Csokonai,  486 

Cumans,  or  Polovtses,  72,  73 

Cunegunda,  106,  112 

Custozza,  570 

Cyril,  43  ;  death  of,  44 

Cyrillic  alphabet,  44,  47 

Czernowitz,  362,  597 

Cziraki,  494 


D 


Dacians,  the,  14,  17,  18,  19,  26 
Dagobert,  28 

Dalmatia,    19,    23,    31,  54,   56,  81, 
84,  221,  227,  409,  431,  453,  485, 

585 
Dalmatians,  15,  17 
Dampierre,  Henry  of,  297 
Danube,  3,  14,  15,  16 
Danzig,  399 
Daun,  Marshal,  355 
Davoust,  487 
Deak,  Francis,  492,  494,  514,  515, 

534,  566,  576 
Debreczen,  synod  of,  323 
Decebalus,    king   of    the   Dacians, 

17 
Decius,  19 
Declaration  of  the  Chekh  deputies 

in  1 868,  582 
Defour,  302 
Dembinski,  538 
Devay,  323 
Dietrichstein,  305 
Diocletian,  19,  20 


Dissertatio  Apologetica,  by  Balbin, 

a  Jesuit,  496 
DobUioff,  527 
Doljner,  497 
Dobrovsky,  497 
Domitian,  17 

Dosza,  king  of  the  peasants,  247 
Drahomira,  89 
Dresden,  conference  at,  556 
Drusus,  15 
Drzislav,  king  of  the  Croats,  53  ;  his 

dynasty,  54 
Dubravka,  Bohemian  princess,  91 
Dubrovnik  (Ragusa),  226,  227 
Durrenstein,  castle  of,  133 


Eastern  Question,  471-475  ;  treaty 

of      Adrianople,      475  ;      under 

Francis  Joseph,  557 
Eckhel,  arch^ologist,  378 
Eger  (in  Bohemia),  33S 

(Erlau),  319,  .324 

Eichstadt,  bishopric  of,  413 
Electorate    of  Salzburg,    formation 

of,  413 
Elizabeth,  queen  of  Bohemia,  159 
Emerich,  Saint,  71,  73 
Emona  (Laybach),  16 
Emperor    of  Austria,    creation    of 

title  of,  486 
Engen,  battle  of,  412 
England,  alliance  with,  424 
Eotvos,  514,  534 
Eperjes,  butchery  of,  336 
Erdbsi  (Johannes  Sylvester  Pauno- 

nicus),  323 
Ernest  of  Pardubice,  archbishop  of 

Prague,  161 

,  the  Man  of  Iron,  151 

the  Valiant,  129 

Esslingen,  435 
Esterhazy,  485,  4S8 

-,  Nicholas,  328,  331,  332 

Ethico,  of  Alsace,  142 

Eugene     Beauharnais,     435,    452, 

457 
of  Savoy,  272,  280,  342 


656 


JNDEX, 


Fadinger,  the  peasant  leader,  264 

Falkenstein,  413 

Fantin  de  Valle,  210 

Ferdinand  I.  divides  his  dominions 
with  Charles  V.,   255  ;    crowned 
king  of  Bohemia,    257  ;    king  of 
the     Romans,     257  ;      revolt     of 
Tyrolese  peasants,  258  ;  progress 
of  reformation,    258  ;    establish- 
ment of  Jesuits,  258;  divides  his 
dominions  among  his  three  sons 
259  ;  his  reign  in  Bohemia,  283 
growth    of    royal    power,     284 
monarchy  made  hereditary,  285 
persecution  of  Protestants,  286 
reign     in     Hungary,     314 ;     the 
Turks  in   Hungary,   316;   treaty 
of  Varad,  316  ;  his  death,  320 

n.,  263  ;  reign  in.  Austria,  264, 

265  ;  in  Bohemia,  298-309;  revolt 
of  Bohemia,  299  ;  battle  of  the 
White  Mountain,  30J  ;  religious 
and  political  reaction,  302-305  ; 
Thirty  Years'  War,  308  ;  rule  in 
Hungary,  328 

ni.,  266;  counter-reformation 

in  Austria,  266  ;  crowned,  305  ; 
his  reign  in  Bohemia,  309  ;  con- 
tinuation of  Thirty  Years'  War, 
309;  rule  in  Hungary,  331  ; 
Alsatian  possessions  ceded  to 
France,  266 
IV.  crowned  king  of  Hun- 
gary, 493  ;  agrarian  reform  in 
Hungary,  494 ;  as  emperor  of 
Austria,  504  ;  his  character,  504  ; 
the  Staats-conferenz,  505  ;  affairs 
in  Poland,  506 ;  massacres  in 
Galicia,  508 ;  occupation  and 
annexation  of  Cracow,  509  ;  pro- 
gress of  public  opinion  in  Bo- 
hemia, 510;  in  Hungary,  514; 
unfitness  to  rule,  524  ;  grants  a 
new  constitution,  526 ;  conces- 
sions to  Bohemia,  527 ;  Slav 
congress  at  Prague,  529 ;  revo- 
lutionary movement  in  Galicia, 
531  ;  in  Italy,  532 ;  Hungarian 
revolution,  533-541  ;  parliament 
meets  at  Vienna,  542  ;  the  "  Oc- 


tober days,"  544;    diet  of  Kro- 

merice,      546 ;       abdication      of 

Ferdinand,  547 
Ferdinand  of  Coburg,  present  prince 

of  Bulgaria,  611 

of  Este,  508 

of  Tyrol,  262 ;  founds  Ambras 

museum,  263 
Ficquelmont  (minister),  526 
Fiunie  (Rieka),  345 
Forcheim,  treaty  of,  45,  47 
Fontenoy.       See   War    of  Austrian 

Succession,  348 
Francis  I.  of  France,  315 
V.  of  Modena,  559,  560 

Joseph,    his    accession,    537, 

547  ;  demand  for  federation,  549 ; 
a  new  constitution,  551  ;  period 
of  reaction,  552  ;  concordat  with 
Rome,  555  ;  financial  difficulties, 

555  >     policy     towards     Prussia, 

556  ;  Crimean  war  and  Eastern 
policy,  557  ;  war  in  Italy,  558  ; 
loss  of  Lombardy,  560 ;  return 
to  constitutional  government, 
561  ;  patents  of  October  and 
February,  562  ;  electoral  law  of 
Schmerling,  562 ;  resistance  of 
the  nationalities,  564  ;  Polish  in- 
surrection of  1863,  565 ;  wars 
with  Prussia  and  Italy,  567-571  ; 
Austria  excluded  from  Germany, 
570;  lossof  Venetia,  570;  Austria 
after  Sadowa,  572  ;  negociations 
with  Hungary,  573  ;  the  dual  con- 
stitution, 573 ;  protests  of  the 
Slavs  against  the  new  arrangement, 
577 ;  liberal  reforms,  580 ;  de- 
claration of  the  Chekhs,  582 ; 
the  Galician  resolution,  584 ; 
grievances  of  the  Servians,  Rou- 
manians, and  Croatians,  586 ; 
attempts  at  federation,  589 ;  the 
Ilohenwart  ministry  and  Bo- 
hemia, 590 ;  federation  checked, 

593  j   progress  under   his   reign, 

594  ;  Austrian  policy  towards  the 
East,  600 

Stephen  of  Lorraine,  Francis 

I.,  348;  marries  Maria  Theresa, 
348 ;  is  made  emperor,  352 ; 
death,  356 


INDEX. 


657 


Francis  II.,  401-504;  Austria  at  the 
beginning  of  his  reign,  401  ;  loss 
of  Belgium,  405  ;  acquisition  of 
Western  Galicia,  405  ;  loss  of 
Lombardy,  406  ;  treaty  of  Campo- 

.  Formio, 408;  acquisition  of  Venice 
andDalmatia,4o8;  Marengo,  412; 
treaty  of  Luneville.  413  ;  policy 
of  Austria  after  Luneville,  414; 
takes  title  of  emperor  of  Austria, 
420  ;  war  of  1805,  425  ;  battle  of 
Austerlitz,  426  ;  treaty  of  Press- 
burg,  427  ;  Francis  renounes  title 
of  emperor  of  Germany,  428 ; 
campaign  of  1809,  431  ;  insur- 
rection in  Tyrol,  433  ;  Aspern 
and  Wagram,  434 ;  treaty  of 
Schonbrunn,  436  ;  Illyrian  pro- 
vinces ceded  to  France,  438 ; 
Metternich's  alliance  with  Napo- 
leon, 442 ;  Russian  campaign, 
445 ;  alliance  with  Napoleon's 
enemies,  449  ;  campaign  of  1813, 
451  ;  battle  of  Leipsig,  454  ; 
Austrians  in  Paris,  455  ;  con- 
gress of  Vienna,  458  ;  position  of 
Austria  in  1815,  462;  influence 
of  Metternich,  466  ;  Austria  at 
the  head  of  a  reactionary  policy, 
467  ;  meetings  of  congress,  470  ; 
the  Eastern  Question,  471  ; 
affairs  in  Poland,  Italy,  and 
Germany,  476 ;  development  of 
public  opinion  in  Hungary,  491  ; 
and  the  Slav  countries,  495  ; 
death  of  Francis,  504 ;  his  will, 

504 
Frankfort,  parliament  of,  529,  531  ; 

543.  550,  552,  556,  567 
Frankopan,  334 
Frederick  I.  of  Babenberg,  133 

II.,  the  Fighter,  84,  134 

IV.    (of  the    Empty   Purse), 

151  ;    quarrels    with    his    nobles, 

151  ;  aids  the  Pope,  151  ;  memory 
revered  by  the  peasants,  152 

v.,     emperor     of     Germany, 

creates    Austria    an    archduchy, 

152  ;  increases  dominions  of  his 
house,  152  ;  quarrels  with  Tyrol 
and  Styria,  153  ;  invasion  of 
Carinthia    by    the    Turks,    154; 


adopts  the  monogram,  A.E.I. O.U., 

Frederick  II.,  king  of  Prussia,  349, 

351.   352.   354,   355»   357,   39i, 

392 

,  elector  of  Saxony,  308 

,        elector       palatine,       299 ; 

crowned  king  of  Bohemia,  299  ; 

a  fanatical  Calvinist,  300  ;  battle 

of  White  Mountain,  300  ;  Flight 

of  Frederick,  301 
of  Habsburg,  the  Handsome, 

duke    of    Austria,     emperor     of 

Germany,    143  ;   battle  of  Miihl- 

dorf,  143 
William  II.,  king  of  Prussia, 

400 
Frickthal,  413 
Froushka  Gora,  52 
Fundamental  Articles,  592,  593 
Flissen,  treaty  of,  352 


Gablenz,  569 

Gabriel  Bethlen  (Bethlen  Gabor), 
326-330 

Gaj,  Ljudevit,  500,  513 

Galicia,  war  of  its  Russian  princes 
with  Hungary,  77  ;  annexed  to 
Austria,  359  ;  Joseph  JI.  refuses 
to  annex  it  to  Hungary,  394  ; 
annexation  of  Western  Galicia, 
405  ;  state  of,  in  1846,  506 ;  the 
Polish  massacres,  508  ;  insurrec- 
tion of  1848,  531  ;  state  during 
Polish  insurrection  of  1S63,  565  ; 
concessions  to,  566  ;  position  to- 
wards the  dual  government, 
578 ;    the    Galician    Resolution, 

585 
Gallas,  302,  308,  309 
Gara,  the  palatine,  234,  237 
Gastein,  convention  of,  568 
Gebler,  Von,  3S3 
Geiza  I.,  king  of  Hungary,  60,  64 

II.,  76 

Genz,  423,  425,  429,  446,  475 
George   of    Podiebrad,    153,    205  ; 
chosen- leader  of  the  four  circles 
205  ;  takes    Prague    by  surprise, 
2    U 


658 


INDEX. 


205  ;  is  made  supreme  captain  of 
Bohemia,  206 ;  king,  208 ;  re- 
stores order,  208  ;  breaks  with 
Rome,  211  ;  makes  war  against 
Mathias  Corvinus,  211  ;  death, 
212  ;  his  project  of  an  inter- 
national tribunal,  212 
Gepidae,  19,  23 

Germans,  statistics  of,  5  ;  geogra- 
phical position,  6,  7  ;  in  Hungary, 
see  Saxons  ;  defeated  by  Magyars, 
60 ;  beat  back  the  RIagyars  at 
Merseburg  and  Augsburg,  60  ; 
attack  Hungary,  71  ;  their  posi- 
tion in  Bohemia,  94  ;  the  claims 
of  Germany,  120  ;  their  colonies 
in  Bohemia,  123,  124  ;  partiality 
shown  to  them  by  John  of 
Luxeinburg,  157  ;  their  literature 
in  Austria,  139 ;  influence  in 
Bohemia  under  Vacslav  IV., 
167  ;  reaction  against  them  in 
Bohemia,  16S,  171  ;  their  dislike 
of  Federation,  590 

Gesta  Hu7igarornin,  22 

Ghika,  hospodar  of  Moldavia, 
.362 

Gisella,  wife  of  Stephen  I.,  65 

Giulay,  Austrian  general,  559 

,  prince  of  Transylvania,  66 

Glagolica  alphabet,  47 

Glatz  (Kladsko)  351  ;  364 

Gliick,  378 

Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  74 

Golden  Bull  of  Andrew  H.,  81,  82 

of  Charles  IV.,  163 

Goltz,  302 

Goluchowski,  562,  584 

Gordon,  308 

Gorgey,  538,  539,  540,  541 

Gos,  407 

Goths,  18,  19,  20 

Gran,  created  an  archbishopric,  66  ; 
taken  by  the  Mongols,  84 

Gratz  {grad,  the  strong),  35 

Greece,  insurrection  in,  472  ;  battle 
of  Navarino,  475  ;  treaty  of 
Adrianople,  475  ;  treaty  of  navi- 
gation, 505 

Gregory,  Brother,  founder  of  the 
Bohemian  Brotherhood,  209 

VII.,  54 


Grillparzer,  522,  532 

Gritti,  316 

Grobnik,  victory  of  the  Croats  over 

the  Mongols  at,  84 
Grlin,   Anastasius    (pseudonym    for 

Anthony  Auersperg),  522 
Guastella,  457 

Gul  Baba,  "  father  of  rose^"  337 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  307,  308,  309 


H 


Habernfeld,  historian,  305 

Habetinek,  590 

Habsburg,  castle  of,  141  ;  destruc- 
tion by  Swiss,  152 ;  Austria 
under  the  first  princes  of,   141- 

154 
Haddik,  Magyar  general,  485 
Hagenau,  treaty  of,  143  ;  462 
Hallstadt,  II 
Hammer-Purgstall,  the  orientalist, 

522 
Hanau,  battle  of,  455 
Hanka  (poet),  500 
Harant  of  Polzice,  302 
Hardenberg,  456 
Harrach,  272,  373 
Haspinger,  the  Capuchin,  432 
Hassan,  pacha  of  Bosnia,  324 
Haugwitz,    chancellor    of  Austria, 

373 
Havlicek,  Charles,  513,  554 
Haydn,  37S 
Haynau,  540 

Iledwig,  queen  of  Poland,  223 
I  leister,  imperial  general,  340 
Helen  Zrinyi,  336 
Heltai, Caspar,  Hungarian  reformer, 

323 
Henry    II.    of    France    helps    the 

Szapolyai,  319 
IV.,  327 

lasomergott,  hereditary  duke 

of  Austria,  131  ;  receives  from  the. 
emperor  the  privilegium  minus, 
132 

of    Carinthia,    king    of    Bo- 
hemia,- 156 

of  Schweinfurt,  129 

the  Lion,  131 


INDEX. 


659 


Heraclius,  30 

Hermanduri,  13 

Heruli,  23 

Herzegovina,  600 

Hesse,  insurrection  in,  556 

Hiller,  Austrian  general,  452 

Hocher,  267 

Hochkirch,  battle  of,  355 

Hofer,  432,  437.  43S 

Hohenembs,  ceded  to  Bavaria,  427 

Hohenlinden,  battle  of,  412 

Hohenwart,  590,  594 

Hollar,  the  engraver,  305  I 

Holyk,  Bohemian  theologian,  305 

Holzer,  153 

Honorius,  22 

Honter  (Pastor),  323 

Honveds,  538 

Hormayr,  433 

Horvat,  Servian  leader,  372 

Hrings,  27 

Huber,  Tyrolese  patriot,  432 

Hubertsburg,  treaty  of,  355 

Hulin,  French  general,  426 

Humboldt,  447 

Hungary,  position  of  the  kingdom, 
7,  8  ;  invasion  of  the  Magyars, 
57  ;  their  invasion  of  Italy,  60  ; 
defeat  at  Augsburg,  60  ;  manners 
and  customs  of  pagan  INIagyars, 
61  ;  first  Christian  king,  St. 
Stephen,  64 ;  his  successors  of 
the  race  of  Arpad,  71  ;  Ladislas 
the  Holy,  73 ;  Koloman,  74 ; 
annexes  Croatia,  74 ;  his  laws, 
75  ;  German  colonies,  76  ;  wars 
with  Galicia  and  Venice,  77  ; 
crusaders  cross  Hungary,  78  ; 
Andrew  H.,  79  ;  condition  of  the 
kingdom,  80 ;  the  Golden  Bull,  81 ; 
Bela  IV.,  83  ;  the  invasion  of  the 
Mongols,  83,  84  ;  struggles  with 
Austria,  85  ;  Hungary  gains 
Styria,  85  ;  extinction  of  race  of 
Arpad,  86  ;  civilization  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  87  ;  kingdom 
under  race  of  Anjou,  218  ;  re- 
lations with  Italy,  219;  with 
Poland,  220;  Louis  the  Great, 
220  ;  obtains  Dalmatia,  221  ; 
made  king  of  Poland,  222  ;  state 
of  kingdom  under  Angevin  kings. 


223  ;  Sigismund    of  Luxemburg, 
225  ;    elective  kings,   229  ;  John 
Hunyadi   governor  of   the  king- 
dom,    230 ;    Mathias    Corvinus, 
236  ;  war  against  Bohemia,  238  ; 
against  the  Turks,    240  ;    death, 
241  ;    state    of    Hungary    under 
Corvinus,    242;    Wladyslaw  II., 
244  ;  loss  of  territory,  245  ;  pea- 
sants revolt,  246  ;  Louis  II.,  248  ; 
defeat  of  Mohacs,  249  ;  reign  of 
Szajiolyai,   314;    dismemberment 
of   Hungary,    317  ;    rule    of    the 
Turks,      Maximilian,     320;     the 
Reformation    in    Hungary,    322  ; 
Rudolf    II.,    324;    condition    of 
Hungary,     321-324 ;    war    with 
Turks,    324  ;    Leopold    I.,    332 ; 
conspiracy    of  the   three  counts, 
334  ;  butchery  of  Eperjes,  336  ; 
expulsion    of    the   Turks,    337  ; 
Francis   Rakocsy,   338  ;  annexa- 
tion of  Transylvania,  338  ;  Hun- 
gary reconciled,  341  ;  CharlesIII., 
342 ;  battle  of  Petervarad,   342  ; 
siege  of  Belgrade,  342  ;  peace  of 
Passarowitz,    343  ;  military  fron- 
tiers,  345  ;    Charles    VI.,    346 ; 
Pragmatic  Sanction,  344  ;  revolt 
of  peasants,    346  ;  peace  of  Bel- 
grade, 347  ;  Hungary  under  Maria 
Theresa,      366-381  ;      moriamur 
pro  rcs;e  ■  noslro,    366;    policy  of 
Joseph    II.,    382;    concession  of 
Leopold     II.,     482  ;      struggles 
against  Napoleon,  483-490  ;  Na- 
poleon's proclamation,  488 ;  de- 
velopment  of  public  spirit,  491  ; 
Szechenyi,     493  ;      Deak,     494 ; 
characteristics  of  Magyars,   514  ; 
session   of    1836,    514;    diet    of 
1847,     517;     Magyar     language 
imposed  on  Croatia,   518  ;  races 
in    Hungary,    519  ;  first  Magyar 
ministry,    533  ;    the    war,     537; 
Russian  intervention,    539 ;  ven- 
geance of  Austria,  540  ;  reaction, 
541  ;     return     to     constitutional 
government,      566  ;      the     dual 
government,    573-576 ;     protests 
of  the  Slavs,    577  ;    attitude    of 
Hungary    towards    the    Eastern 


66o 


INDEX. 


Question,  600  ;  present  condition 
of  Hungary,  614 

Huningue,  462 

Huns,  21 

Hunyady,  John  Corvinus,  victories 
over  the  Turks,  230 :  battle  of 
Varna,  231  ;  defeat,  231  ;  made 
lieutenant-general  of  the  king- 
dom, 232  ;  battle  of  Kosovo, 
233  ;  victory  at  Krushevats,  234  ; 
death,  235  ;    siege   of  Belgrade, 

235 

Hus,  John,  169  ;  preacher  at  the 
Bethlehem  chapel,  169  ;  persuades 
Vacslav  to  restore  the  University 
of  Prague  to  Ihe  Chekhs,  171  ; 
struggle  against  indulgences,  172; 
summoned  to  the  Council  of 
Constance,  173;  his  death,  174; 
character,  175  ;  proclaimed  saint 
and  martyr,  178;  anniversary  of 
his  death  in  1869,  583 

Hussars  first  formed,  226 

Hussite  wars,  176-201 


Ignatiev,  General,  601 

Illyria,  a  Roman  province,  13  ;  a 
prefecture,  20  ;  kingdom  of,  under 
the  French,  438-441  ;  in  1847,  520 

Illyrians,  12 

Illyrism,  501 

Inn,  quarter  of,  363 

Insurrection,  234,  485,  488,  489 

Ionian  Isles,  409 

Ireland,  analogy  with  Bohemia,  513 

Isonzo,  452 

Istria,  408,  427,  436,  452,  463 

Italia  irjxdcnta,  595 

Italians,  statistics  of,  5;  geographical 
position,  8 

Italy  under  Austrian  rule.  See 
Lombardy,  Venice,  Victor  Em- 
manuel, 532,  595 


Jach,  Mag}'ar  general,  485 
Jacquin,  botanist,  378 
Jagerndorf,  351 


Jakoubek     Stribrsky,     disciple     of 

Hus,  176,  178 
Jankov,  defeat  of,  309 
Japydes,  12,  14 
Jazyges,  17,  20 
Jelacic,  ban  of  Croatia,535,537,  545, 

547 
Jemmapes,  battle  of,  404 
Jerome  of  Prague,  178 
Jesuits,     founding    of     Society     of 

Jesus,     258  ;    settled    in    Gratz, 

262  ;  their  work  in  Austria,  262, 

265;    in    Bohemia,     311;    their 

suppression,  376 
Jews,  statistics  of,  5  ;  in  Bohemia, 

124;    in    Austria,    138,    386;    in 

Hungary,  224 
Jicin,  defeat  at,  569 
Jirecek,  Austrian  minister,  590,  597 
Jiskra  of  Brandyse,  233,  237 
Joan  of  Arc,  apocryphal  letter  of, 

192 

of  Naples,  220 

John  XXIII.,  pope,  151,  152,  172 
,  Archduke,  432,  435,  527 

of    Luxemburg,    marries    his 

son  to  Margaret  Maultasche,  143  ; 
chosen  king  of  Bohemia,  156  ; 
his  character,  156  ;  his  wars,  158  ; 
treaty  with  Poland,  159;  asso- 
ciates his  son  Charles  with  him, 
160  ;  death  at  Cressy,  160. 

ofPomuk,  165 

of  Pribram,  197,  201,  204 

of    Rokycana,    197 ;    chosen 

bishop,  199,  201,  204 

of  Zeliv,  180,  187 

Jokai,  533 

Joseph  I.,  277,  341 

■ II.    elected     emperor,    356  ; 

associated  with  Maria  Theresa 
in  government,  356,  372  ;  gives 
Fiume  to  Hungary,  372  ;  cha- 
racter of,  382  ;  animosity  to  the 
Church,  284  ;  edict  of  toleration, 
385  ;  Josephinism,  387  ;  encour- 
ages trade,  389  ;  his  legislation, 
390;  foreign  policy,  391;  alli- 
ance with  Russia,  392  ;  war 
against  Turks,  393  ;  death,  393  ; 
rule  in  Hungary,  394 ;  in  Bo- 
hemia, 396 


INDEX. 


66 1 


Joseph  (Palatine),  421,  486,  491 
Joubert  (Marshal),  407 
Jourdan,  French  general,  407,  413 
Juarez,  president  of  Mexico,  570 
Jiidenburg,  407 
Judgment  of  Libusa,  497 
Juhasz,  Calvinist  pastor,  323 
Jupans,  or  Zhupani,  55,  56 
Justinian,  23 


K 


Kalnoky,  Hungarian  minister,  614 
Kara  Mustapha  (grand  vizier)  268, 

335 
Karadjitch        (Karadzic),        Croat 

writer,  500 
Karageorgevitch,  prince  of  Si  rvia, 

609 
Karloman,  45 
Karlovac,  fortress  of,  324 
Karlstein,  castle  of,  162 
Kasso,  defeat  of,  326 
Kathvalda,  17 
Kaunitz,  353  ;  treaty  of  Versailles, 

354  ;  356,  359,  399 
Kazimir  (of  Poland),  203,  212 
Kemenyi,  John,  332 
Kerpen,  Austrian  general,  407 
Kesseldorf,  defeat  at,  352 
Khazars,  43 
Khlesl,  Austrian  bishop,  261,  263  ; 

cardinal,  296 
Kiniszy,  240 
Kinsley,  272,  373,  497 
Kis,  538,  540 
Kisfaludy,  Alexander,  491 

,  Charles,  491,  515 

Klapka,  Magyar  general,  540,  572, 

601 
Klek,  463,  601 

Kocel,  prince  of  Pannonia,  44 
Kolcsey,  Hungarian  poet,  491,  494 
Kolin,  victory  at,  355 
KoUar,  poet,  498,  520 
Koller,    in    Elba  with    Napoleon, 

456 
Koloman,  king  of  Hungary,  74  ;  of 

Croatia,  75 
Kolovrat,  505,  526 
Komensky  (Comenius)  ,  201,  306 


Koniggratz  (Kralove  Hradec),  battle 

of,  569 
Konigsberg  founded,  105 
Konigsmarck,  Swedish  general,  309 
Koppany,  65 

Kormend,  battle  of,  333,  426 
Korner,  Theodore,  447 
Korutanian  Slavs,  27,  40,  51 
Korybutovic,   Sigismund,  regent  of 

Bohemia,  188,  191,  193 
Koseski,  501 
Kossuth.  Louis,  494,  513,  514.  5i 5 

533,  534,  536-541,  572,  576 
Kostcher  lordship  in  Moravia,  351 
Krakovsky  of  Kolovrat,  364 
Kralove  Dvor,  Bohemian  MS.,  497 
Kray,  Austrian  general,  412 
Kresimir,  king  of  the  Croats,  53 
Kresse!,  Von,  383 
Krisanic,  502 
Krok,  40 

Kromerice,  diet  of,  54^ 
Krudener,  Mme.  de,  462 
Krushevats,  victory  of  Hungarians 

at,  234 
Kuchuk  Kainardji,  treaty  of,  361 
Kulm,  451 
Kunersdorf,  355 
Kurucz,    insurrection   of  the,   247, 

340 
Kulna  Hora,    1 16,    156,    182,   187, 

214 
Kutuzov,  426 


Laczkovics,  4S4 
Ladislas  the  Cuman,  86 

the  Holy,  73  ;  laws,  73 

La  Fayette,  409,  462 

Lamberg,  General,  hanged  by  the 

mob  at  Pesth,  537 
Landesauschuss,  51 1 
Landeshoheit,  136 
Landshut,  victory  at,  355 
Language,  vitality  of,  9 
Lascy,    Irish   soldier  in   service  of 

Austria,  355 
Latour,  minister  of  war,  hanged  by 

the  mob  of  Vienna,  544 
Lauenburg,  duchy  of,  568 


662 


INDEX. 


Laureacum  (Lorch),  i6,  64, 
Laveleye,  M.   de,   his  criticism  on 

the  Magyars,  586 
Lazarevic,  despot  of  Servia,  228 
Lazaric,  452 
Lefebvre,  General,  437 
Legations,  the,  477 
Leipsic,  founding  of  university   of, 

171  ;  battle  of,  451,  454 
Lemberg    (Lwow   or    Lviv),    360  ; 

court  of  appeal  at,  391 
Leopold  I.  of  Babenburg,  128 
IL,  the  Handsome,  129 

-  in.,  130 

IV.,  130 

V.   gains  Styria  and    part  of 

Carniola,  132  ;  goes  on  crusade, 
133  ;  quarrels  with  Richard  Coeur 
de  Lion,  133 

VI.,  the  Proud,  133,  134 

the    Pious,    founder    of    the 

Leopoldine  line,  149  ;  ob- 
tains Trieste,  150;  battle  of 
Sempach,  151  ;  extent  of  Aus- 
tria in  his  time,  266  ;  character 
of,  267  ;  siege  of  Vienna  by  the 
Turks,  268  ;  state  of  Austria 
under,  271  ;  his  army,  272  ; 
fleet,  273  ;  finance,  274 ;  ad- 
ministration, 275  ;  rule  in  Hun- 
gary, 332  ;  revolt  of  the  three 
counts,  revenge  of  Leopold,  334 

n.,  398;    his  reforms,    398; 

revolt  of  Belgium,  398  ;  treaty  of 
Sistova,  399  ;  French  revolution, 
400 ;  his  death,  400  ;  his  rule  in 
Hungary,  482  ;  in  Bohemia,  495 

IL  of  Tuscany,  559,  560 

of  Tyrol,    marries  Claudia   of 

of  Medici,  265 

William,  265 

Leo  Thun,  529 

Liburni,  14 

Libusa,  40 

Lichtenstein,  Charles  of,  301,  302, 

380 
Liegnitz,  battle  of,  355 
Lipany,  battle  of,  213 
Lissa   (Leuthen),    battle    of,    355  ; 

naval  victory  of,  570 
Lithuania,  160 
Lobau,  camp  at,  435 


Loben,  408 

Lobkovice     (Lobkwitz),     William 

and  Diepold,  295 
Lobomirski,  Chekh,  529 
Lobosice,  battle  of,  354 
Lodomeria.     See  Galicia 
Lombards,  23,  24,  29 
Lombardy,  159,  412,  459,  532,  570 
Lothar,  96 
Loudon,    General,    355,   393,  407, 

455 
Louis  XVI.,  405 
Jagellon,    king    of    Bohemia, 

215  ;    reformation    in    his    reign, 

216  ;  king  of  Hungary,  248  ; 
marries  Mary  of  Austria,  246  ; 
death  at  Mohacs,  249 

the  Great,  king  of  Hungary, 

220  ;  his  wars  in  Italy,  220  ; 
acquires  Dalmatia,  221  ;  pro- 
claimed king  of  Poland,  222 

Low  Countries,  388,  391,  398,  403 

Lower  Austria,  condition  of,  under 
Ferdinand  IV.,  510 

Ludmila,  89 

Luneville,  treaty  of,  413 

Lusatia,  94,  163 

Luther  compared  to  Hus,  174  ;  pro- 
gress of  his  doctrines  in  Bo- 
hemia, 216 

Luxemburg,  Bohemia  under  the 
house  of,  155 


M 


Mack,  General,  424,  425 
Magenta,  battle  of,  559 
Magnano,  412 
Magyar      harshness     towards     the 

Slavs,  586 
Magyars,  statistics,  5  ;  geographical 

position,  7  ;  invade  Moravia,  57, 

58;    manners   and   religion,    61. 

See  Hungary 
Mahmoud,  509 
Mahomet  II. ,  234,  240 
Majestas  Carolina,  162 
Manteuffel,  556 
Mantua,  406,  413 
Mansfeld,  297,  299-301 
Manuscript  of  Kralove  Dvor,  497 


INDEX. 


663 


Maradas,  302 

Marchegg,  battle  of,  1 10 

Marches,  the,  477 

Marcomanni,  13,  16,  18,  23 

Marcus  Aurelius,  18 

Marengo,  battle  of,  412 

Maret,  duke  of  Bassano,  488 

Margaret  Maultasche,  143,  144  ; 
gives  up  Tyrol  to  Rudolf  IV., 
147  ;  her  character,  148 

j\Iaria  Louisa,  443  ;  marriage, 
443  ;  retires  to  Schonbrunn,  457 

Theresa,  348  ;  marriage,  348  ; 

invasion  of  Silesia,  349 ;  war  of  the 
Austrian  succession,  350  ;  peace 
of  Berlin,  351  ;  continuation  of 
war,  352  ;  peace  of  Dresden,  352  ; 
treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  352  ; 
Seven  Years'  War,  354  ;  partition 
of  Poland,  357-361  ;  acquisition 
of  Bukovina,  361  ;  war  of 
}5avarian  succession,  362  ;  treaty 
of  Tesin,  363  ;  her  rule  in  Bo- 
hemia, 364  ;  crowned  at  Prague, 
365  ;  edict  on  forced  labour,  365  ; 
revolt  of  peasants,  365  ;  her  rule 
in  Hungary,  366  ;  vioriamur  pro 
re^e  nostra,  369 ;  disputes  with 
the  diet,  370;  frontier  lands,  371  ; 
death,  372 

Marie  Antoinette,  356,  405 

Marini,  212,  238 

Marmont,  General,  441 

Maroboduum,  16 

Maroboduus,  16 

Marseillaise,  translated  into  Magyar, 
484 

Martinice,  Jaroslav  of,  295,  296 

Martinovics,  484 

Martinuzzi  Utieseno%'ic,  315,  317, 
318,  319 

Mary,  queen  of  Hungary,  222 

Massena,  407 

Mathias,  archduke  of  Austria,  re- 
volts against  Rudolf,  emperor  of 
Germany,  261  ;  grants  liberty  of 
conscience,  262  ;  succeeds  Ru- 
dolf, 263  ;  makes  Ferdinand  of 
Styria  his  heir  ;  becomes  king  of 
Bohemia,  263  ;  remonstrances  of 
the  nobles, 292  ;  the  defenestration 
of  Prague,    295  ;    revolt  of  Bo- 


hemia, 296  ;  death,  297  ;  his  rule 

in  Hungary,  327 
Mathias   Corvinus,   211;    his  wars 

against  George  of  Podiebrad,  21 1 ; 

his  reign  in  Hungary,   236-241  ; 

his  laws,  242 
of  Janov,  theologian  and  fore- 
runner of  Hus,  168 

of  Thurn,  291 

Matice  Skolska,  613 

Matitsa  Ceska  (Society  of  Popular 

Literature),  513 
Matitsa  (or  Matica),  Servian  Literary 

Society,  500,  58S 
Maurice,   prince  of  Manderscheid, 

364 

Maxen,  victory  of,  355 

Maximilian  L,  245  ;  war  against 
Hungary,  245  ;  unites  all  the  Aus- 
trian domains,  251  ;  peace  of 
Basel,  252  ;  his  policy  and  matri- 
monial alliances,  253  ;  wars,  254  ; 
peasant  war  in  Carniola,  254 

H.,     259-261  ;    as    king    of 

Bohemia,  289  ;  as  king  of  Hun- 
gary, 320-322 

,  Archduke,  596 

,  emperor  of  Mexico,  570 

Joseph,  of  Bavaria,  362 

■ of  Bavaria,  300 

Maximus,  19 

Mehemet  Aga,  300 

Ali,  509 

Melas,  Austrian  general,  412 

Memmingen,  412 

Menegatti,  267 

Menmarot,  Bulgarian  prince,  59 

Menzel,  de,  Austrian  general,  351 

Meran,  articles  of,  257,  258 

Mercy,  de,  ambassador  at  the  court 
at  Paris,  356 

Merfeldt,  Austrian  envoy  to  Na- 
poleon, 407 

Merseburg,  60 

Mesid  Bey,  230 

Meso  Keresztes,  battle  of,  325 

Meszaros,  Magyar  general,  538 

Methodius,  43  ;  goes  to  Rome,  44  ; 
baptizes  Borivoj  of  Bohemia,  45  ; 
second  journey  to  Rome,  45  ; 
death,  46 

Metternich,  his  father  at   congress 


664 


INDEX. 


of  Rastadt,  410;  his  relations 
with  Napoleon,  423,  446,  448. 
449,  455  ;  subsequent  policy 
466  ;  birth  and  character,  468 
influence  over  Francis  II.,  504 
assists  the  Porte,  509 ;   his   fall 

Michael,    voievode    of    Wallachia, 

326 
Mieczyslav,  duke  of  Poland,  64 
Milan,  21  ;  Chekhs  in,   97  ;  revolt 

against  Austria,  532 
• Obrenovic,   prince  of  Servia, 

602,  610,  615 
Milic  of  Moravia,  168 
Military    frontiers,    324,    345,    371, 

520,  614 

roads,  16 

Militic,  602 

Millesimo,  battle  of,  406 

Millesimos,  Austrian  family  settled 

in  Bohemia,  402 
Milutinovic,  453 
Ministeriales,  of  Styria,  136 
Minnesingers  in  Austria,  140 
Miramar,  571 
Modena,    duke   of,    obtains    Breis- 

gau,  409  ;  state  of,  revolts  against 

Austria,  477 
Mohacs,   battle  of,  217,  249,  314; 

defeat  of  Turks,  335 
Moimir  I.,  42 

II.,  49 

Molwitz,  battle  of,  349 

Mongols,  30  ;  invasion  of  Hungary, 
83-85;  of  Moravia,  loi 

Montebello,  defeat  at,  559 

Montecuculli,  General,  272,  333 

Montenegro,  independence  de- 
clared, 602 ;  present  attitude  of, 
609 

Montenotte,  battle  of,  406 

Montesquieu,  extract  from,  366 

Montmirail,  battle  of,  456 

Moravia,  26,40,41  ;  its  power,  48  ; 
its  fall,  50 ;  reunion  with  Bo- 
hemia, 100 ;  under  John  of 
Luxemburg,  157  ;  declared  an 
integral  part  of  the  kingdom  of 
Bohemia,  163  ;  faithful  to  Catho- 
licism during  the  Hussite  wars, 
189  ;  persecution  of  the  reformed 


party,    305  ;    declaration    of   the 

diet,  583 
Moreau,  407 
Morocco,  389 

Moscow,  Slav  congress  at,  578 
Moskirch,  defeat  at,  412 
Mozart,  378 

Miihldorf,  battle  of,  143 
Midler,  Adam,  468 

,  the  Jesuit,  267 

Miinster,  treaty  of,  266 

Murad,  sultan  of  Turkey,  230,  231, 

233 
Murat,  king  of  Naples,  457,  461 
Mutimir,  chief  of  the  Croats,  53 


N 


Nachod,  defeat  at,  569 
Nadasdy,  Magyar  patriot,  334 
Nagy,    Paul,   Magyar  orator,  487, 

492 
Naples,    Austrian   intervention    in, 

470 
Napoleon  Buonaparte's  victories, 
406,  407  ;  peace  of  Loben,  408  ; 
success  in  Italy,  425  ;  takes 
Vienna,  426;  battle  of  Austerlitz, 
426  ;  conduct  towards  Austria, 
430;  campaign  of  1809,  431; 
Aspern  and  Wagram,  434-436  ; 
treaty  of  Schonbrunn,  436  ;  rule  in 
Dalmatia,  439 ;  marriage,  443  ; 
Russian  campaign,  445  ;  cam- 
paign of  18 13,  451  ;  battle  of 
Leipzig,  454;  peace  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  457  ;  banishment  to  Elba, 
457 ;  return  to  France,  461  ; 
Waterloo,  462  ;  his  inquiry  into 
Magyar  grievances,  487  ;  his 
proclamation  to  Hungary,  488 

HI.,     559,     560,     565,    570, 

572  _ 
Navarino,  battle  of,  475 
Neerwinden,  victory  at,  404 
Neidhard  (Nitardi),  the  Jesuit,  267 
Neisse,  351 
Nemecky     Bred,    victory     of     the 

Taborites,  187 
Nesselrode,    Russian    ambassador, 
456 


INDEX. 


665 


Nessing,  Tyrolese  patriot,  432 
Key,  Prench  general,  426 
Nicholas,  prince  of  Montenegro,  609 
,  the  czar,  474,  509,  539,   545, 

557,  602 
Nicobar  Islands,  390 
Niegosh,  Peter  Pelrovic,  prince  of 

Montenegro,  453 
Nikolsburg,  peace  of,  329 
Nikopolis,  battle  of,  226 
Nissa,  19 

Nodier,  Charles,  440 
Nofels,  battle  of,  144 
Noreja,  16 

Noricum,  15,  16,  18,  20,  23,  27 
No  vara,  352 
Novibazar,  sandjak,  of  Bosnia,'  604, 

606 
Novi-Szad,  604 
Nymphenburg,  treaty  of,  350 


O 


Obradovic,  Croat  wiiter,  500 

Dositei,  poet,  392 

"October  days"  riots   in  Vienna, 

544 
Odoacer,  23 
Olomouc  (Olmutz),  96,  102,  155 

,  conference  at,  556 

Omladina,  588 
Onod,  diet  at,  340 
Oreb,  180 
Oriental  Academy,  379 

of  Poland,  597 

of  the  southern  Slavs,  597 

Orphans,  the,  a  Hussite  sect,   1S9, 

197 
Orsova,  400 
Ortenau,  413,  427 
Ostrogoths,  19,  21,  23 
Otokar,  Premysl,  I.,  98,  lOO 

,  II.,  103-111 

Ott,  Mavgar  general,  485 
Otto  of  Brandenburg,  112-115 

of  Freisingen,  130 

of  Olomouc,  96 

the   Gay,    duke    of    Austria, 

143 
Ousti,  179,  180,  190 
Ovilabis  (Wels),  16 


Pago,  island  in  Adriatic,  408 

Palacky,  500,  522,  528,  549,  582 

Palatine,  office  of,  82 

,  Joseph,  retires  before  Na- 
poleon, 486  ;  491 

Palestro,  559 

Palffy,  General,  485,  486 

,  John,  367,  368 

Pannonia,  14 ;  conquered  by  the 
Romans,  15  ;  principal  towns  in, 
15;  invaded  by  Goths,  18;  di- 
vided by  Diocletian,  20  ;  ravaged 
by  Sarmatae,  20  ;  attacked  by 
Avars,  colonized  by  Slavs,  27  ;  its 
ecclesiastical  organization,  65  ' 

Pannonians,  14,  17 

Panslavism,  502,  509,  528 

Pappenheim,  General,  265 

Paques  Veronaises,  408 

Parma,  352,  477 

Parthenopian  republic,  411 

Pasek,  John,  284 

Paskievitch,  540 

Passarowitz  (Pozarevac),  treaty  of, 

343 

Passau,  bishopric  of,  413 

Paterines,  sect  of,  221 

Paul  II.,  pope,  210 

Payne,  Peter,  195 

Pazmany,  cardinal,  328 

Peasants,  revolts  in  Transylvania, 
229 ;  in  Hungary,  246  ;  in  Car- 
niola,  254;  in  Tyrol,  257;  in 
Austria,  261,  264  ;  efforts  in  the 
Hussite  wars,  1S3  ;  condition 
under  Maria  Theresa,  365,  374  ; 
freed  by  Joseph  II.,  395,  390  ; 
state  of,  in  Galicia,  508 

Peczely,  poet,  482 

Pelcel,  Bohemian  writer,  496,  497 

Perczel,  General,  538,  539 

Petcheneguens,  67,  72 

Peter,  king  of  Hungary,  71 

of  Mladenovic,  177 

of  Vinea,  135 

Urseolus  II.,  doge  of  Venice, 

53 
Petofi,  Alexander,  515,  533  ;  death, 

539 


666 


INDEX, 


Petovia  (Pettau),  i6,  20 

Philibert,  bishop  of  Coutances, 
199,  201 

Philip  the  Handsome,  255 

Piacenza,  352 

Piccolomini,  302 

Piedmont  takes  part  in  Crimean 
war,  558 

Pilgrim,  archbishop  of  Lorch,  64 

Pillersdorf,  526,  529 

Pilnitz,  400 

Pisa,  council  of,  170,  172 

Pius  II.,  pope,  210 

VI.,  3S6 

Plevna,  602 

Plzen  (Pilsen),  faithful  to  Catho- 
licism during  Hussite  wars,  191  ; 
siege  of,  196 

Poland,  state  of,  116;  united  for  a 
time  to  Bohemia,  1 17;  treaty 
with  John  of  Luxemburg,  159; 
partition  of,  356-361  ;  Western 
Galicia  united  to  Austria,  405  ; 
condition  during  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  459  ;  476,  506,  531,  565 

Poles,  statistics  of,  5  ;  geographical 
position,  8.  See  Galicia,  Sobi- 
eski,  Poland 

Polovtses,  72 

Pompadour,  Madame  de,  354 

Porte,  509 

Portugal,  476,  505 

Potocki,  580,  589 

Pragmatic  Sanction,  279-281 

Prague,  founding  of,  40 ;  seat  of 
Bohemian  court,  126;  founding 
of  university,  16 1  ;  council  of, 
177;  siege  of,  183;  synod  of, 
185;  note  on  topography  of,  197  ; 
court  of  appeal  established,  288  ; 
defenestration  at,  295  ;  university 
given  up  to  Jesuits,  303  ;  bom- 
bardment, 309 ;  conference  at, 
450 ;  Slav  congress  at,  529 ; 
riot  at,  530 

Praguerie,  the,  201 

Premysl,  40 

Otokar,  98-100 

II.,   103;  his  successes,   104; 

declines  imperial  crown,  105  ; 
struggle  with  Hungary,  105  ; 
battle  of  Cressenbrlinn,  105  ;  gains 


Eger,  106  ;  gains  Carinthia  and 
Carniola,  107  ;  again  declines 
imperial  crown,  107  ;  war  with 
Rudolf,  108  ;  gives  up  territory 
to  him,  109  ;  receives  investiture 
from  him,  109 ;  fresh  quarrels 
and  battle  of  Marchegg,  iio; 
death,  no 

Premyslides,  89-126 

Preradovic,  501 

Presern,  501 

Pressburg,  peace  of,  427 

Primary  schools  founded  in  Austria, 

377 

Prmce  Eugene,  280,  281,  337,  343 

Privilegium  majus,  146 

Probus,  19 

Prochazka,  497 

Procopius  the  Great,  191  ;  invades 
Bavaria,  Austria,  and  Lusatia, 
192 ;  goes  to  the  council  of  Basel, 

195 

the  Less,  191 

Protestants,  in  Bohemia,  216;  tole- 
ration of,  in  Hungary,  481 

Prussia.  See  Frederick  II.,  Maria 
Theresa,  and  Francis  Joseph 

Ptacek  of  Perkstein,  204,  205 


Quadi,  13,  16,  18,  21,  23 


R 


Raab  (Gyor),  325,  489 

Radetsky,  449,  454,  532,  559 

Ragusa  (Dubrovnik),  226,  410,  439  ; 
annexed  to  Dalmatia  by  Napo- 
leon, 439  ;  441,  453 

Rakocsy,  Sigismund,  327 

,  Francis,  339-341 

,  George,  331 

,  George  II.,  332 

,  Joseph,  347 

Rakos,  232 

Rapp,  General,  462 

Rascians,  Magyar  name  for  Servian 
immigrants,  338 

Rastadt,  treaty  of,  277 

Rausimond,  20 


INDEX. 


667 


Rautenstrauch,  383 
Rechberg,  Count,  565,  5^^ 
Reformation,    in    Austria,   257  !    in 

Tyrol,  Styria,  and  Carniola,  257  ; 

in  Bohemia,2i6  ;  in  Hungary,  322 
Regnier,  General,  447 
Reichenbach,     congress     at,     399 ; 

treaty  of,  450 
Religion  of  the  ancient  Slavs,  37 
Resolution  of  the  Galician  diet    in 

1868,  5S4 
Reuss,  Austrian  general,  452 
Rhsetia,  15,  18;  division  of,  20;  23 
Rhaetians,  13,  15 
Rheinfelden,  413 
Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  133 
Rieger,  529,  578,  582,  591,  594 
Rivoli,  defeat  at,  406 
Rodich,  General,  586 
Roise,  General,  453 
Rokycana,  John  of,  191,  197 
Roman  colonies  in  Dalmatia,3l 
Romans,  their  conquest  of  lUyria, 

13  ;  of  the  Taurisci,  13;  wars 
with  the  Cimbri,  13 ;  triumph 
over  Dalmatians,    Liburni,    etc., 

14  ;    over    Rhceti   and    Vindilici, 

15  ;  organization  of  these  con- 
quests, 15,  16 ;  wars  against 
Dacians,  17;  Roman  emperors 
born  on  Austro-Hungarian  terri- 
tory, 19 

Rostislav,  prince  of  Moravia,  his 
struggle  against  the  Germans,  41  ; 
sends  for  Cyril  and  Methodius, 
43  ;  is  betrayed  by  Svatopluk,  45 

Roumanians,  5  ;  statistics,  5  ;  geo- 
graphical position,  8  ;  position  in 
Transylvania,  520  ;  their  declara- 
tion of  rights,  535  ;  condition 
under  Francis  Joseph,  553  ;  their 
grievances  at  the  present  time, 
577  ;  their  protest  in  1868,  588  ; 
their  independence  declared,  602 

Rovigno  in  Istria,  408 

Roxolani,  17 

Royal  Society  of  Prague  founded, 497 

Rudolf  of  Habsburg,  85  ;  elected 
emperor,  107  ;  dispute  with 
Bohemia,  108 ;  marriage  com- 
pact, 109  ;  battle  of  Marchegg, 
no;   attacks   Moravia,   112;  his 


compact  with  Bohemia,  113; 
invests  his  sons  with  Austria, 
Styria,  and  Carniola,  142 

Rudolf  II.,  261  ;  peasant  war  in 
Austria,  261  ;  made  king  of 
Bohemia,  289  ;  progress  nf 
Jesuits  in  his  reign,  290 ;  reli- 
gious dissensions  in  Bohemia, 
290  ;  the  Letter  of  Majesty,  291  ; 
his  abdication,  292 

IV.,  the  Founder,    145  ;    the 

privikghiDi  majits,  146  ;  acquires 
Tyrol,  147  ;  founds  university  of 
Vienna,  148;  Austria  is  divided, 
149 

,   son    of   Albert    I.,    king    of 

Bohemia,  155 

Rug",  23 

Rusccni,  315 

Russia,  begins  to  share  in  European 
politics,  352 

Russian  Poland,  insurrection  in,  565 

Ruthenians,  5;  statistics,  5  ;  geogra- 
phical position,  8  ;  their  situation 
in  Eastern  Galicia,  507  ;  in  Hun- 
gary, 521  ;  their  attitude  in  1869, 
585 


Sabaria  (Stein-am-Auger  ?),  16 

Sadowa,  battle  of,  569 

Safarik,  500,  520,  522,  529 

St.  Gothard  (Kormend),  battle  of, 

333 

St.  Julien,  412 

St.  Ladislas,  73 

St.  Petersburg,  treaty  of,  405 

St.  Simon,  341 

St.  Vit  cathedral  founded,  126 

Salzburg,  409,  413,  427,  436 

Samo  the  Merchant,  28,  29,  39 

Samuel  Ala,  71 

San  Stefano,  treaty  of,  602 

Sarmatae,  17,  20,  21 

Sarmizegethusa,  17 

Saurau,  Austrian  diplomatist,  417 

Saxons,  7  ;  settle  in  Hungary  and 
Transylvania,  "6  ;  charter  granted 
to  them  by  Andrew  III.,  82  ;  their 
undue  influence  in  Transylvania, 
521;  535 


668 


INDEX. 


Sazava,  monastery  of,  125 

Scharnhorst,  Prussian  general,  449 

Scheldt,  389 

Scherer,  French  general,  412 

Schlegel,  Frederick,  in  the  service 
of  Austria,  468 

Schleswig-Holstein,  568,  569 

Schlick,  Chekh  leader,  302 

Schmerling,  Austrian  diplomatist, 
562-566,  578,  581,  582 

Schmidt,  president  of  Parliament  of 
Vienna  1849,  543 

Schonbrunn,426  ;  treaty  of,  436  ;  457 

Schwarzenburg,  adviser  of  Leopold 
I.,  267 

■ ,  Adolf,  takes  Raabin  1597,  325 

,  Felix,  546,  551  ;  his  death,  554 

,  Karl,  449,  450,  451,  454,  456, 

458 

Schwarzgelber,  543 

Scordisci,  12 

Selim  (Sultan),  321 

Selirn  Gherai,  khan  of  the  Crimea, 
269 

Sempach,  battle  of,  151 

Servia,  228  ;  does  homage  to  Hun- 
gary, 228  ;  its  independence  de- 
clared, 602  ;  attitude  towards 
Russia,  609  ;  king  Milan  recog- 
nized, 610  ;  declares  war  against 
Bulgaria,  610  ;  accepts  tutelage  of 
Austria,  610 

Servian  emigrants,  338 

Literary  Society,  500 

Servians,  30  ;  Sorabes,  33  ;  in  Hun- 
gary, 324  ;  origin  of  military  fron- 
tiers, 324  ;  their  privileges,  338  ; 
treatment  by  Austria,  342,  343  ; 
persecutions,  344 ;  reduced  to 
serfdom,  346  ;  peasant  revolt,  346 
as  soldiers,  369  ;  emigration  into 
Russia,  372  ;  admitted  to  con- 
gress, 483  ;  foundation  of  Matitsa, 
500 ;  complaints  against  Hun- 
gary, 520 ;  declare  war,  535  ; 
they  are  sacrificed  to  the  dual 
government,  577 

Shabats,  fortress  on  the  Danube, 
240,  248 

Sicarius,  29 

Sickingen,  340 

Sigismund  of  Luxemburg,  emperor 


of  Germany,  king  of  Bohemia 
and  of  Hungary,  165  ;  gives  Hus 
a  safe  conduct,  173;  Bohemia  re- 
volts against  him,  182  ;  his  reign  in 
Hungary,  225  ;  plans  war  against 
the  Turks,  227  ;  his  diets  at  Buda 
and  Temesvar,  226  ;  treaty  of  suc- 
cession with  Austria,  227  ;  gives 
up  Szepes  to  Poland  ;  Dalmatia 
joins  Venice,  227  ;  his  relations 
with  the  Servian  despots,  228 

Sigismund,  king  of  Poland,  297 

Korybutowicz,  188,  190 

Sigovesius,  12 

Silesia  annexed  to  Bohemia  in  1335, 
159  ;  becomes  an  integral  part  of 
the  kingdom,  163  ;  is  ceded  to 
Prussia  by  Maria  Theresa,  351 

Silvio  Pellico,  470 

Sinelli,  267 

Sirmium,  15  ;   16,  18  ;  22 

Siscia  (Sisek),  14,  15 

Sistova,  treaty  of,  399 

Sitvatorok,  treaty  of,  325 

Sixtus  IV.,  213 

Skala,  Chekh  historian,  305 

Skrzyniecki,  Polish  general,  509 

Slavata,    chief  justice  of  Bohemia, 

295 
Slav  liturgy,  47 

Slavonia,  under  Francis  Joseph,  553 
Slavs,  8,  21,  24,  25,  33;  division 
of  Slav  empire,  29  ;  character  of 
their  migrations,  32  ;  religion, 
32,  37  ;  Slav  dialects,  33  ;  early 
government,  34;  effect  of  Magyar 
invasion,  59  ;  the  Slavism  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  495-503.  Sec 
also  Chekhs,  Croats,  Servians, 
Poles,  Ruthenians,  Slovaks, 
Slovenes 

of  the  Elbe,  29,  37,  498 

Slovaks,  5  ;  statistics,  5  ;  geograph- 
ical position,  8  ;  their  complaints 
against  Hungary,  520-521  ;  their 
present  condition,  577 
Slovenes,  5  ;  statistics,  5 ;  geograph- 
ical position,  8  ;  early  history,  32, 
51  ;  conversion  to  Christianity, 
51  ;  revolt  of  peasants,  264;  the 
Reformation,  258  ;  under  French 
rule,    438-441  ;    literary  revival. 


INDEX. 


66g 


501  ;     their     attitude     in    1867, 

Sniolka,  vice-president  of  parlia- 
ment of  Vienna,  543  ;  president, 
546 

Sobeslav  I.,  duke  of  Bohemia,  96 

Sobieski,  John,  king  of  Poland, 
269  ;  siege  of  Vienna,  270  ;  letter 
to  his  wife,  270 

Solferino,  battle  of,  559 

Soliman  the  Magnificent,  248,  249  ; 
makes  treaty  with  Hungary,  315  ; 
enters  the  land,  316  ;  success 
before  Buda,  317  ;  banishes  infant 
king  to  Transylvania,  317  ;  occu- 
pies central  Bfungary,  317  ;  siege 
of  Sziget,  320  ;  death,  320 

Solomon,  king  of  Hungary,  72 

Sonnenfels,  Austrian  publicist,  378, 

383 
Sophia,  queen  of  Bohemia,  169 
Sorabes  (Serbs  or  Servians),  33 
Sorr  (Zarov),  defeated  at,  352 
Spain,  war  of  succession,  277 
Spalato,  etymology,  19  ;   capital  of 

the   Croats,  32  ;   council   of,  54  ; 

coronation    of  Zoonimir  at,    54 ; 

made     an      archbishopric,      56  ; 

seized  by  Koloman,  74 
Speckbacher,       Tyrolese      patriot, 

432,  437 
Spinola,  267 
Spytihnev  I.,  duke  of  Bohemia,  89 

—  n.,  93 

Stadion,  Philip,  423,  429,  507,  531 

,  Francis,  546,  551,  552 

Stahrenberg,  423 

Stanislas  Leszczynski,  348 

Stanko  Vraz,  501 

Steinberg,  counts  of,  found  Chekh 

museum  in  Prague,  497 
Steinbriick    built    by    Leopold    of 

Babenberg,  139 
Stephen  I.,  king  of  Hungary,  64-70 ; 

canonized,  73 

11.,  75 

HI.,  76 

,  Archduke,  511,  517 

,  king  of  Croatia,  54 

of  Moldavia,  238 

Tomasevic,  king  of  Bosnia,  237 

Sternberg,  Caspar,  memoirs  of,  397 


Steyer,  413 

Stockach,  victory  at,  413 

Stranski,  Bohemian  writer,  305 

Stratimirovic,  Servian  general,  535, 
536,  602 

Strohbach,  vice-president  of  parlia- 
ment of  1849,  543 

Strossmayer,  Bishop,  586 

Stur,  Slovak  writer,  520 

Styria  gained  by  Hungary,  85  ; 
included  in  the  inheritance  of 
Leopold  in.,  149,  150 ;  in 
domains  of  Maximilian,  251  ; 
peasant  war  in,  257  ;  Reforma- 
tion in,  258  ;  restoration  of 
Catholicism,  262 

Suevi,  13 

Suvorov,  Russian  general,  412 

Svatopluk,  prince  of  Moravia,  45- 
47  ;  secures  the  recognition  of 
independence  of  Moravia,  47  ; 
his  power,  48  ;  defeat,  4.9 ;  legend 
concerning  his  death,  49 

Swedes  in  Bohemia,  306-30S,  309 

Swieten,  Gerhard  van,  Dutch  pro- 
fessor of  medicine,  377,  378,  383 

Swiss,  battle  of  Sempach,  151  ; 
peace  of  Basel,  252 

Sylvester,  Pope,  66 

Sylvius,  ^neas,  189,  198,  209,  235, 

237 

Syria,  expedition  in,  against  Mehe- 
met  Ali,  509 

Szapolyai,  Emerich,  240 

,  John,  defeats  the  Kurucs,  247  ; 

is  proclaimed  king  of  Hungary, 
314  ;  seeks  alliance  with  the 
Turks,  315  ;  his  treaty  with 
France,  315  ;  treaty  of  Varad, 
316  ;  his  death,  316 

,  John  Sigismund,  316;    voie- 

vode  of  Transylvania,  321 

,  Isabella,  316,  319,  320 

Szathmar,  peace  of,  341 

Szechenyi,  the  Great  Magyar,  455, 

493>  494,  514,  517,  534 
Szeged,  peace  of,  231 
Szeklers,  8 

Szelpczenyi,  Magyar  primate,  354 
Szentmariai,  484 
Sziget,  siege  of,  320 
Sziiagy,  237 


670 


INDEX. 


Taaffe,  Count,  612-614 
Tabor,  180,  182,  202,  206 
Taborites,     185,     187,     196,     197  ; 
their  defeat  at  Cesky  Brod,  198  ; 
202,  204 
Talleyrand,  412 
Tarasp,  lordship  of,  413 
Tarvis,  Col  de,  407 
Taurisci,  12,  13,  14 
Tegethoff,  Admiral,  568,  570,  597 
Teleki,  Ladislas,  540 

,  Magyar  orator,  514 

Temesvar,    defeat    of    the    Kurucz 

near,  247 
Tesin  (Teschen),  351 ;  treaty  of,  363 
Teutonic  knights,  196 
Theodoric,  23 
Theodosius  L,  21  ; 

II,,  22 

Theresianuni,  377 
Thorn,  399 

Thugut,  363,  411,  412,  415 
Thun,  Mathias,  529 

,  Leo,  529 

Thuringians,  23 

Thurn,  Henry  of,  298,  299,  300 

,  Mathias,  291,  295,  297 

Thurzo,  the  Palatine,  328 

Tiberius,  15,  16,  17 

Tilly,  General,  300 

Tisza,  614 

Tokoli,  Emerich,  335,  372 

Tomasic,  General,  453 

Tomislav,  king  of  the  Croats,  53 

Tomory,  archbishop  of  Kalocsa,  249 

Torgau,  defeat  at,  355 

Torbk,      Valentine,      Transylvania 

general,  317 
Torstenson,  Swedish  general,  309 
Trajan,  17,  18 
Transleithania,  577 
Transylvania,  formation  of  the  prin- 
cipality,   321  ;    its    princes,    325- 
332  ;  accepts  a  voievode  from  the 
Porte,    332  ;  insurrection  of  To- 
koli, 335  ;  annexation  to  Austria, 
339  ;    treaty    of   Szathmar,  341  ; 
condition  under  Ferdinand  IV., 
521  ;  dietat  Kolosvar,  535  ;  again 
separated    from    Hungary,    553  ; 


made   a    province   of    Hungary, 
588 
Trautmansdorf,  302 
Trautson,  Austrian  diplomatist,  272 
Trebbia,  victory  at,  412 
Trent,  402,  427 

Trieste,  foundation  of,  12  ;  condition 
under  Francis  I.,   379  ;  included 
in  Inner  Austria,  402 
Trogir    (Trau)    conquered    by    the 

Venetians,  53 
Troppau  (Opava),  351 
Truber,  translator  of  the  Bible  into 

Slav,  258 
Tsiganes,  63 
Turbigo,  559 

Turks,  invade  Carinthia  and  Styria, 
154;  the  Balkan  peninsula,  221  ; 
first  battle  with  the  Magyars,  222  ; 
their  progress,  225  ;  gain  battle  of 
Nikopolis,  226  ;  capture  Sniede- 
revo,    229  ;    are  beaten  back   by 
Hunyadi,  230  ;  treaty  of  Szeged, 
231  ;    battle   of  Varna,    231  ;    of 
Kosovo,   233  ;  loss  of   Belgrade, 
235  ;    conquest  of  Bosnia,   237  ; 
building  of  Shabats,  240;  invasion 
of  Transylvania,  240  ;    defeat  at 
Kenyer-meso,    248  ;    truce    with 
Hungary,   241  ;  defeat   the  Mag- 
yars,  245  ;    Soliman  the  Magni- 
ficent, 248  ;  capture  of  Belgrade, 
248  ;     battle    of   Mohacs,    249  ; 
capture  of  Buda,  250  ;    siege  of 
Vienna,     259  ;     their    expulsion, 
337  ;  peace  of  Karlovci,  337 
Tuscany,     duchy     of,     belongs     to 
Francis   of  Lorraine,    348  ;  349  ; 
exchanged  for  Salzburg,  413 
Tyrol,    Roman    conquest    of,    13 ; 
assigned    to   Austria,    144,    147  ; 
struggles  of  nobles  with  Frederick 
IV.,    151  ;  peasant    war,   257  ;  is 
ceded  to  France,  413  ;  to  Bavaria, 
428  ;  the  insurrection,  432  ;  revolt 
against  Bavaria,   453 ;    condition 
under  Ferdinand  IV.,  511 


U 


Udine,  conference  at,  408 
Ujejski,  Polish  poet,  508 


INDEX. 


671 


Ujlaky,  Magyar  noble,  237 

Ulm,  capitulation  of,  425 

Uniate  Greek  Churcli,  532 

Unna,  district  of,  400 

Urban  IV.,  218 

,  Slovak  writer,  520 

Urseolus,  doge  of  Venice,  71 

Uskoci,  Slav  refugees,  345 

Utraquists,  or  Calixtins,  formation 
of  the  sect,  177-179  ;  organization 
of  its  clergy,  178  ;  negociations 
with  council  of  Basel,  195  ;  decay 
of  the  Utraquist  church,  204 ; 
allowed  the  use  of  the  cup,  288  ; 
their  struggle  with  the  archbishop 
of  Prague,  294 ;  reappear  under 
Joseph  II.,  386 


V 


Vacslav  I.,  the  One-eyed,  king  of 
Bohemia,  loi  ;  influence  of  the 
Germans  under  him,  loi;  invasion 
of  the  Tartars,  101-102 

II.,  102  ;  Otho  of  Branden- 
burg made  regent,  11 2-1 14;  re- 
volt of  the  nobles,  1 14  ;  he  be- 
comes king  of  Poland,  1 1 7 

III.,  king  of  Bohemia,  118  ;  is 

assassinated  at  Olomouc,  1 19 

IV.,  164;  his  character,  165  ; 

rise  of  legend  of  St.  John  of 
Nepomucen,  166  ;  league  of 
nobles  against  him,  166  ;  religious 
troubles,  167 ;  John  Hus,  168 ; 
the  Utraquists,  177  ;  Taborites 
179  ;  death,  181 

,  the  Saint,  89,  90 

Valduc,  prince  of  the  Slovenes,  51 

Valens,  21 

Valentine  Torok,  317 

Valentinian,  21 

Valeria,  chief  town  of  Pannonia,  20 

Vandals,  18 

Van  Svvieten,  377 

Varad,  treaty  of,  in  153S,  316,  318 

Varna,  defeat  at,  231 

Vasquez,  302 

Vasvar,  peace  of,  333 

Vasvary,  Magyar  orator,  533 

Veldidena,  Witten,  near  Inns- 
bruck, 16 


Velchrad,  capital  of  Moravia,  50 

Veleslavin,  Adam  of,  390 

Vends,  28,  34 

Veneti,  12,  34 

Venetians  in  Dalmatia,  53 

Venice,  77,  78,  79,  408,  409,  410, 
532,  560,  570 

Verboczy,  246,  247,  248,  314,  317, 
318 

Verona,  diet  of,  135 ;  congress  at,  47 1 

Versailles,  treaty  of,  354 

Verseghi,  Magyar  poet,  486 

Vespasian,  16 

Vesselenyi,  Peter,  Magyarnoble,  334 

Victor  Emmanuel,  541,  559,  560 

Victorin  of  Podiebrad,  21 1 

Vienna  founded,  132  ;  founding  of 
university,  148  ;  insurrection  in, 
153;  captured  by  Stephen  Szapo- 
lyai,  314  ;  treaty  of,  in  1606, 
326  ;  patriotism  of  Viennese,  407  ; 
taken  by  French,  426  ;  return  of 
Francis  II.,  428;  second  sur- 
render, 434 ;  fortifications  de- 
stroyed, 436  ;  Prussian  emigrants 
in,  447  ;  congress  of,  458  ;  state 
under  Ferdinand  IV.,  522;  par- 
lianxent  of  1848,  542-546  ;  "Oc- 
tober days,"  544;  modern  im- 
provements, 596 

Vigevano  yielded  to  Sardinia,  352 

Vilemov,  truce  of,  211 

Villafranca,  interview  of  Napoleon 
with  Francis  Joseph  at,  560 

Villani,  302 

Vindilici,  15 

Vindobona  (Vienna),  15,  16 

Visigoths,  19,  21,  23 

Vitold,  grandduke  of  Lithuania, 
186,  1S7 

Vladislav,  duke  of  Bohemia,  96  ; 
goes  on  crusades,  takes  part  in 
siege  of  Milan,  97 

,  the  posthumous  king  of  Bo- 
hemia, 204,  206  ;  king  of  Hun- 
gary, 232-236 

Vocel,  poet,  500 

Vodnik,  lllyrian  poet,  440,  500 

Vojtech,  or  Adalbert,  bishop  of 
Prague,  64  ;  goes  to  Hungary, 
91  ;  is  murdered,  92  ;  his  remains 
carried  to  Prague,  93 


672 


INDEX. 


Von  Trenck,  369 
Vorarlberg,  426,  427 
Vorosmarty,  Magyar  poet,  515 
Vratislav  I.,  duke  of  Bohemia,  89 

II.,  94  ;  receives  the  title  of 

king,  94 

(Breslau),  93,  182,  239,  351 

Vraz,  Stanko,  Servian  poet,  501 
Vysehrad,  castle  of,  40,   183,   184, 

223 

W 

Wagner,  the  Jesuit,  333 

Wagram,  435 

Wallenstein,  Albert  of,  298,  307,  308 

Wallis,  302 

Warsaw,  revolution  in,  495 

Wellington,  461 

Wels,  defeat  of  Magyars  at,  60 

Wencelaus.     See  Vacslav 

Wends,  Wihdisch.     See  Vends 

Weyprecht,  597 

White  Mountain,  battle  of,  300,  301 

Wielicska,  salt  mines  of,  360 

Wiellinger,  leader  in  Austrian  pea- 
sant war,  265 

William  de  Machaut,  French 
chronicler,  158 

,  king  of  Prussia,  567 

Windischgratz,    Prince,    526,    530, 

538,  54S>  547 
Winzingrode,  425 
Wladyslaw  II.,  king  Dobre,  244 

Jagiello,     king    of     Poland, 

elected  king  of  Bohemia,  213  ; 
power  of  the  nobles  under  him, 
214  ;  religious  sects  reconciled, 
214  ;  he  persecutes  the  Bohemian 
Brotherhood,  215 ;  is  elected 
king  of  Hungary,  215;  his 
expedition  against  the  Turks, 
230  ;  battle  of  Varna,  231  ;  his 
death,  231 

Lokietek,    king    of    Poland, 

119;  offered  crown  of- Bohemia, 
186,  187 

Wolf,  Ferdinand,  522 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  315 
Wrangel,  Swedish  general,  309 
Wrede,  Bavarian  general,  437,  452 
WuUersdorf,  Captain,  597 


Wurmser,  Austrian  general,  406 
Wurtemburg,  428 
Wurzburg  ceded  to  France,  413 
Wycliffe,  169 


Ypsilanti,  Servian  prince,  473 


Zalan,  Slovak  prince,  59 

Zadar  (Zara)  seized  by  Hungary, 
74 ;  captured  by  Venice,  78 ; 
ceded  to  Venice,  80 

Zatec  (Saatz),  siege  of,  186 

Zavisa  of  Falkenstein,  115,  I16 

Zbynek,  archbishop  of  Prague,  170, 
171 

Zdenek  of  Sternberg,  grand  bur- 
grave  of  Bohemia,  210 

Leo,  of  Roszmital,  216 

Zelena  Hora  (Griinberg),  confedera- 
tion of,  210 

Zerotin,  Charles  of,  290,  298,  306 

Zinzendorf,  267 

Zips  (Szepes)  claimed  by  Maria 
Theresa,  360  ;  attached  to 
Austria,  372 

Ziska,  knight  of  Trocnov,  180  ; 
goes  to  Tabor,  182;  organizes 
the  Hussites,  183  ;  raises  siege 
of  Prague,  183 ;  conquers  the 
country,  184 ;  offers  crown  to 
Wladyslaw  of  Poland,  185  ; 
defeats  Sigismund,  187  ;  defeats 
the  Utraquists,  188  ;  his  death, 
188 

Zizim,  brother  of  the  Sultan  Baja- 
zet,  241 

Zoltan,  60 

Zrinyi,  ban  of  Croatia,  320 ;  siege 
of  Sziget,  320;  a  descendant 
commands  Magyar  forces,  t,'})'}) 

,  Helen,  335,  336 

,    Peter,    334 ;    execution    of, 

334 
Zurich,  peace  of,  560 
Zvenigorod,       struggles      between 

prince  of,  and  prhice  of  Kiev,  77 
Zvonimir,  king  of  Croatia,  54 


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